


7 Days in May

by prufrockslove



Series: The 13th Sign [2]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 07:13:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 93,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14827799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prufrockslove/pseuds/prufrockslove
Summary: Sequel to The 13th Sign. It might be the end of the world. Fox Mulder had a psychic vampire on the loose, a six-year-old son in tow, a ton of emotional baggage, and an FBI budget, but at least he wasn't dead. Mulder felt things were looking up - romantically and apocalyptically.





	1. 7

TITLE: 7 Days in May

AUTHOR: prufrock's love

GENRE: X-file, MSR, Post season 7, Sequel to The 13th Sign.

RATING: R

DISCLIAMER: Fox Network owns The X-Files. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made from the use of these characters.

ARCHIVE: Gossamer, Mimic, & AO3 only.

SUMMARY:  It might be the end of the world. Fox Mulder had a psychic vampire on the loose, a six-year-old son in tow, a ton of emotional baggage, and an FBI budget, but at least he wasn't dead. Mulder felt things were looking up - romantically and apocalyptically.

 

****

 

Day 1: Romance is dead; Hallmark and Disney acquired it in a hostile takeover.

 

****

 

Past or present tense, Mulder wanted Dana Scully by his side in a game of Scrabble, any planned or accidental exposure to hallucinogens, or an alien apocalypse. She didn't split infinitives, suffer fools, or shoot to wound unless she meant to. She wasn't a field agent anymore, but she remained an FBI agent and a medical doctor. If she only winged someone, she'd planned to. A small, beautiful woman, she over-compensated linguistically, and Mulder thought she'd never met a Latin compound word she didn't like. In the last twenty-four hours, he'd heard her use “prosopagnosia,” “zombify,” “Dickensian,” and “cryokinesis” in casual conversation.

 

“Zombify” earned 76 Scrabble points, before any double-word or triple letter spaces. And she wore little lace panties and soft sweaters and she smelled like amber and rain and William's No More Tears shampoo. And Mulder kind of, maybe - in a way - still loved her.

 

Dana Scully talked at him so she didn't have to talk with him. She used intellect and reason as body armor. Since "An Inconvenient Truth" came out, she treated sex with Mulder like it benefitted the environment: reduce, reuse, and recycle. As if she thought letting a perfectly good erection go to waste was socially irresponsible.

 

He didn't think she knew he knew that.

 

Serial killers and monsters in the dark? He had a big gun and a fancy degree from Oxford. Aliens, mutants, zombies, super soldiers? Not a problem. A global conspiracy against innocent citizens? He called in the Gunmen, picked up a fire ax, and took no prisoners. One aesthetically-pleasing former partner who didn't know what the hell she wanted? Despite being forty-five years old and Mr. Big Shot with the Investigative Support Unit, Mulder might as well Google 'How can I tell if a girl likes me?'

 

Thanks to her, he knew different kinds of suture stitches existed. He recognized the simple interrupted stitch, the horizontal mattress stitch, and - her specialty - the fuck-just-make-it-stop-bleeding stitch. In the last decade and a half, he'd received all three.

 

Thanks to her, he wasn't still dead.

 

Thanks to her, he had a son who’d observed his spelling words for the week were all onomatopoeia. Meow. Chirp. Hiss. Scully had passed on her predilection for super-sized words to their six-year-old progeny. When William had repeated Frohike's joke – if a sheep and a pig made a baby, it said "boink" - to the teacher, Dana blamed Mulder's genetics.

 

Last night, Mulder rented the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie on pay-per-view at the Disney hotel to hear her parse its scientific inaccuracies while wearing prim cotton pajamas and drinking mini-bar rum and cokes.

 

Dana had no idea who he was, only who she thought he was.

 

The scar - the one on his left shoulder where she winged him during Clinton's first term in office - twinged again.

 

When William was a baby, Mulder remembered lazing in bed with her as she examined each of Mulder’s scars, trying to match them to the case files she'd been reading. After her abduction in 2001, they'd spent the summer on the Vineyard, letting her get to know her son - and her son's father. Waiting for her memories to return. Mulder remembered taking his turn at the name the scar game and telling her Federal Blue Cross/Blue Shield had subsidized a fair amount of their foreplay. He remembered how her laughter sounded, and how the sun played across her bare white skin and auburn hair.

 

Six years had passed since that summer.

 

Dana said he treated her like she was a child.

 

Mulder begged to differ.

 

He wanted his Scully back, and he suspected she did know that.

 

"Don't look at me like you know me, Mulder!" she'd ordered him this morning, while he was still naked in the king-sized bed in her hotel room. It seemed cosmically wrong - making love to a woman in a room with hidden Mickey Mouse icons on the duvet cover. In the scheme of world domination, the Disney Empire made the Syndicate look benign. Only The Dark Side held the 2007 conference on criminal psychology at Disneyland, and noted available child care in the brochure.

 

And we can't go to Disneyland without Scully, Daddy.

 

Mulder didn't know how the hell she wanted him to look at her, but he did know her. He knew her through cancer and Emily and in vitro and William. Through budget meetings and Black Oil and far too many funerals. Through lots and lots and lots of files. Through the Temple of the Seven Stars and the Church of the 13th Sign and the Mystic Pizza Hut. Through Robert Modell and Duane Barry and Donnie Pfaster. Through the mid-west, the east coast, every ER in Maryland and Virginia, and the Arctic and Antarctic. Through a thousand stakeouts and lonely motels, a hundred summer days on Martha's Vineyard, and one endless March night in the year the world didn't end, he damn sure knew her.

 

She was the one who didn't know her these days.

 

If Dana Scully got a tattoo, it meant trouble. Tattoos equaled stormy seas, dangerous waters, and big 'keep out Mulder' signs. The pretty little patch of ink was always about him, though she always said it wasn't.

 

Mulder rolled his sore shoulder a few times and reminded William not to forget his new Mickey backpack. Using his badge as his photo ID, Special Agent Mulder followed William's mother past the gate agent and onto the plane bound for Oregon.

 

And back to where they started.

 

Again.

 

****

 

Mulder thought of asking Dana if the airport or the Lariat rental counter seemed familiar, but he didn't, since it wouldn't. She still had a hard stop in her memory between 1992 and 2001. She'd disappeared from a Virginia cult's compound in January, shortly after William's birth, and woke in April in an Allentown hospital room to an FBI profiler she didn't know holding an infant son she didn't recognize.

 

At first, Mulder marveled at the effort she put into piecing together her life. She memorized their old reports and the surviving case-files. She'd quote them to him, as if he hadn't been there. She studied photographs and video tapes, her old checkbooks and journals and medical records and expense reports. When they lived together, he found timelines she'd made, trying to recreate what happened when. When her father died, when her sister died. What shade of red her hair was that autumn. She knew what Dana Scully wore, ate, investigated, spent, and thought - or at least, committed to paper - the entire time they were partners.

 

She hated the phrase “You don’t remember,” particularly if Mulder said it.

 

She knew on a Saturday in late April 2000 she rented a movie and ordered a pizza delivered to her apartment at eight o'clock at night. She picked up her dry cleaning in the morning and paid her credit card bill in full on-line.

 

She didn't know she'd spent afternoon at the batting cages with him, and Mulder went home to shower and change clothes. She didn't know he appeared at her door with a bottle of red wine to go with the pizza. She didn't remember them holding hands, or embracing, or her - about a month pregnant - falling asleep against his shoulder. She didn't remember waking in the small hours of the morning, while the DVD menu of "Bull Durham" replayed on its thirty-second loop, to find he still held her as he dozed. She didn't know he teased her about being a lousy date; he brought a thirty-dollar bottle of wine, and she didn't even put out. She took his hand, mumbled something about the ERA and the Penthouse forum, and led him to her bed, where they'd slept straight through till morning.

 

He would have told her those things happened, but she didn't want to ask him.

 

Eventually, it dawned on him her effort was less because she needed to recreate Dana Scully for her, and more because she wanted to recreate Dana Scully for him.

 

He was the FBI profiler, after all.

 

As Mulder drove toward Bellefleur, Oregon, he slowed the rented Taurus, looking for the orange X he spray-painted on the road during their first case together. No landmarks existed on the long, straight stretch of asphalt through the forest, and the road was patched and repaved in places. After miles and miles of scenic, Pacific Northwest nothing, Mulder started thinking the X was gone, but comfortingly, he saw it.

 

He wanted to tell his son this was where Daddy first fell in love with Mommy.

 

He looked in the rear-view mirror. William was engrossed in Mulder's new phone.

 

"No more new programs, Williams. Applications. Whatever," Mulder said.

 

In the rental car behind them - because she wanted her own rental car - Dana held up her hands questioningly, as if wanting to know why he'd stopped in the middle of the road.

 

Mulder salvaged the case file after their office fire, but the file didn't mention his Krylon X. In the official report, nothing noted their conversation in the motel room the next night, or before his abduction, years later. Those things, she couldn't recreate from files and receipts. Those moments, those details put flesh on bones and made them the people they were. Or at least, the people they had been, the day she'd marched into his old basement office wearing a suit belonging on a secondhand Lazy Boy and certain every one of his bizarre cases had some rational scientific explanation.

 

Yeah - the first case, fourteen years ago - he'd loved her.

 

A little boy’s voice said, "Daddy, Scully wants to know what the hell you're doing."

 

William held up the iPhone to show him the text message on the screen. Having no memory of the Internet revolution, Dana texted and e-mailed in full sentences, with capital letters and proper punctuation. Mulder didn't know if it pissed him off or turned him on or both.

 

"Nothing, buddy," Mulder answered, and put his foot on the gas pedal again.

 

****

 

Like super-soldiers and true love, old habits died hard and returned when least expected.

 

Mulder felt odd not having Billy Miles or Billy’s father greet them, though both deputies were declared dead years ago. The FBI had Portland agents in Bellefleur, but Mulder assumed they were out interviewing the victims' friends and families. In the station, an old metal ceiling fan still hung from the low ceiling, the blades stationary. A collection of potted plants still thirsted for light in the two front windows. At one of the rear desks, a young, dark-haired female deputy glanced up as they entered, but returned her attention to her computer screen. A middle-aged deputy paused his telephone conversation. Mulder didn't know either of them.

 

The set felt unsettlingly the same; only the actors had changed.

 

The one person Mulder recognized in the little station was the Native American woman who held the combined position of dispatcher and secretary. She cradled the telephone against her shoulder as they entered, writing a message with one hand and rooting for something on her desk with the other. Her long black hair had white streaks at each temple, and reading glasses sat low on her nose. In 1992, he'd placed her at about his age. However improbably, photographs of her grandchildren decorated her desk.

 

She spotted them, put the telephone caller on hold, and left three other lines to blink and beep impatiently.

 

"Agent Mulder," she said, sounding tiredly cheerful. "When your secretary called, I asked her to repeat your name three times. It's good to see you again."

 

"Mrs. Bahe, you're still holding down the fort. It's good to see some things haven't changed," he answered. As he spoke, he touched Scully's shoulder blade lightly with his fingertips. It was their old signal, and one he hadn't used in several years; this person knew Dana, but Dana wouldn't remember them.

 

Scully's head nodded almost imperceptibly.

 

The secretary looked the two of them over, and her eyes settled on William. She looked at the boy’s tall, slim build, the wavy brown hair, the angular features, and at Mulder. She noted the blue eyes and fair skin and looked at Dana. With casual precision, she checked both of their hands for wedding bands, did the mental math for a six-year-old child, and in about three seconds, Mulder knew she had their number.

 

She gave them a knowing smile and, in the calm, even cadence unique to Native Americans, said, "You must think our little town has the worst luck in the entire nation, Agent Mulder."

 

"Per paranormal occurrence per capita, I'd say you're running head to head with the rough side of Philadelphia, but still a far distant second to Chaney, Texas."

 

"What happened in Chaney, Texas?"

 

"Entire town of vampires," he answered.

 

Dana cringed and covered her face with her hand, as if she hadn't read the report.

 

"Hard to top that," Mrs. Bahe responded, whether she thought he was joking or not. As she opened her center desk drawer, she said, "I knew Claude Johnson, the third person they found. I went to school with him. He started running with a bad crowd, didn't graduate. He spent most of the 80's in either jail or the state mental hospital."

 

"Our records indicate he was last hospitalized in 2004," Mulder said. "After 2004, he fell off the grid."

 

"For a while, he lived in a tent off an old logging road north of town," she told them, looking from him to Dana and back again. "If Deputy Hoese or Deputy Miles went out, I used to ask them to look in on him." She paused, as if weighing her words. "No one expected Claude's story to have a happy ending, but he was someone's son."

 

"We're sorry for your loss. Unfortunately, we can't undo the crimes committed," Dana said, speaking for the first time since they entered the station. "But if we can discover what's happening and why - who's doing this - we can prevent it from happening to anyone else."

 

Mrs. Bahe nodded, being as polite as Dana, and smiled as if comforted by the pat answer.

 

An awkward silence followed. Dana hadn't said anything wrong. Mulder had recited those same phrases to a thousand victim's relatives over the years. The FBI taught new agents to be professional but sympathetic to victim's families, and Dana had repeated the textbook paragraph word for word.

 

Behind the reception area, the station held four battered metal desks, one for each deputy. Files and half-empty Styrofoam coffee cups littered a table on one wall. A series of laptops were plugged into a surge protector connected to an orange extension cord. Mulder presumed the area was the Portland FBI agents' makeshift office space. Each deputy's desk had a chair beside it, and folded metal chairs in a corner had masking tape labels indicating they'd been borrowed from the VFW building next door. A map of the area was tacked up on the far wall, thirty feet behind Mrs. Bahe's desk. Plastic push-pins marked points in the forest around the town, each with a Post-it flag with a name. The flag due east of Bellefleur read 'C. Johnson.'

 

"Karen West worked with my daughter at the hospital. They went to nursing school together," Mrs. Bahe added, and blinked quickly before her polite expression returned.

 

Mulder recognized the name, though he hadn't seen a file yet. Searchers found a fifth body yesterday afternoon, and so a fifth plastic tack and Post-it flag went up on the map.

 

Murder wasn't anonymous in a small down.

 

"Something lives as long as the last person who remembers it, so these people live on through you and your family," Mulder told her, and this time her sad smile seemed more genuine.

 

"It's a comforting thought, Agent Mulder, but that's a Navajo proverb and I'm not Navajo."

 

"A wise old Navajo man told it to me. Recite one comforting Jewish proverb," he challenged. She conceded she couldn't, and he said, "Exactly. Because there aren't any. If Jews made Hallmark cards, every one would say 'Such a tragedy, but it could be worse. Have some soup.'"

 

"The coyote is always out there, and the coyote is always hungry," Ms. Bahe countered. "Also Navajo."

 

"Trust memory over history," Mulder told her, still quoting Albert Holstein. "Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable." He adjusted a framed school picture of a prepubescent girl on her desk, as if it that gave the universe some order. "Some people's stories don't have happy endings, but we'll do everything we can to catch this coyote. You know that."

 

"I know you will, and we appreciate it.” More brightly, she said, “I saved rooms for you at the motel. They're a hot commodity." As she handed the room keys up to Mulder, she added apologetically, "Two rooms. I didn't know..."

 

"That's fine," Dana told her easily.

 

Mulder looked down at the blue plastic tags attached to the keys, and looked again. They stayed in the same rooms in 1992, before the fire, and, after the motel was rebuilt, again in 2000. The town still had ten motel rooms, but he found it statistically unlikely they'd get the same two rooms three times running.

 

"You have a few hours before the next briefing, if you want to get settled in and have a late lunch."

 

On her desk phone, four lines blinked red SOS signals, but she let them wait. The national media descended along with the FBI. Mulder planned to offer what assistance he could and get back to DC before William missed any more school. He'd do his job, as ordered, but the less time they spent in Bellefleur, Oregon, the better. A dull little knife started to twist inside his gut, making it hurt to take a deep breath.

 

"Meatloaf today at the diner." Mrs. Bahe paused again. "We're glad to see you. Both of you."

 

"I wish I could say I was glad to be back," Mulder told her, and Dana said nothing.

 

"Coconut cream is the pie of the day," she responded. "Susie makes them fresh each morning. Get it before it's gone."

 

He put his hand on William's head, toying with the boy's hair. "That's worth coming back to Oregon for."

 

****

 

"Ayden J. has two mommies," his son informed him in aisle four of the Bellefleur drug store.

 

"He does," Mulder agreed absently. And both mommies were hot.

 

"So does Denver Bowles-Chang. Barbara Marie has two daddies. Two daddies who love each other, not a daddy and a step-dad," the boy clarified. "They're homosexual, and that's fine." As if in afterthought, William added, "Uncle Langly is definitely not homosexual."

 

"Buddy, Langly isn't your uncle. Uncle Bill and Uncle Charlie are your uncles," Mulder explained. "They're Mommy's brothers. My sister Samantha would be your aunt, and my Aunt Miriam and Aunt Rebecca are your great aunts."

 

As if Mulder hadn't spoken, William continued, "Maya has a daddy and a step-daddy and an old step-daddy. None of them love each other."

 

Mulder added a travel-sized tube of toothpaste to his shopping basket. He'd packed his carry-on bag for a three-day trip to California, and the extension to Oregon meant the supplies needed restocked.

 

Dana, with whatever new age quirk compelled her to eat bee pollen, drink green tea, and take Bikram yoga classes, voted for a private school in Alexandria, Virginia so liberal Mulder got a scornful note from the teacher after sending William's lunch packed in zip-lock plastic bags rather than reusable cloth baggies. He'd turned the note over and written, “Dear Miss Janet: According to the FBI database, your parents live in an apartment building once occupied by a hibernating, human-liver-eating mutant we apprehended. We arrested three sex offenders in your neighborhood and we are tracking a serial killer, a child pornography ring, and possibly, a demonic shape-shifter in your area. Please let me know whether you'd like me to focus on continuing to keep our world safe or on how my son's pretzels are packed. Sincerely, Special Agent Fox Mulder.”

 

He didn't get anymore haughty hippy notes from Miss Janet, but Dana got the invitations to parent-teacher conferences.

 

"Ayden M. has a mommy and a daddy. They're married," William added. In the shopping basket, a three ounce can of shaving cream joined three ounces of shampoo and the miniature tube of toothpaste. Miss Janet would have been appalled, but even Mr. Big Shot with the ISU had to fit all his carry-on liquids into one clear, quart-sized plastic bag before they'd let him on the plane home. "They're married to each other."

 

"How conventional of them," Mulder commented.

 

As they made their way to the front of the store, he let William toss a pirate coloring book, a box of crayons, and a little candy bar into the basket. While they waited at the register, and while William looked the other way, Mulder started to reach for a box of condoms, but lowered his hand again.

 

Before last night, he hadn't been with Dana in months, and years before that, but he'd never given STD's a thought. Pregnancy wasn't an issue; the tests after her second abduction revealed the same absence of ova puzzling the doctors after her first abduction. Mulder didn't think of himself as monastic, but between work and William and battling Armageddon... In truth the last woman he'd been to bed with besides Dana Scully was his ex-wife, years ago.

 

As Mulder considered it, 'monastic' was a correct term. 'Choosy' would also apply, or 'focused.' So would 'unrequited,' which earned more Scrabble points than 'sad.'

 

Last night, at Disneyland, Dana's offer to accompany Mulder to Oregon temporarily offset his dread, as did somehow ending up in her bed. Mulder had no idea how they got from reviewing old autopsy reports to naked in front of a hand towel folded to look like Dumbo. He blamed alien mind control rays and missing time. He did remember seeing, on the soft skin of Scully's abdomen, not far from the old gunshot wound scar, a small tattoo of a monarch butterfly.

 

He was a trained observer; the tattoo hadn't been there in February. "What's this?" he'd asked her in the quiet darkness. The Mickey Mouse duvet slid to the floor, along with their clothing. Forming a coherent question took effort. One touch and his whole body craved hers, like a drug addict who thought he kicked the habit.

 

"What do you think it is?" she responded last night.

 

He looked at the pretty yellow and orange tattoo again, and too many thoughts crowded into his addled brain.

 

"I dunno," he mumbled, the truth at the time.

 

Mulder remembered her warm fingertips touching his stubbly cheeks. "You have scars."

 

She said it like he should understand. Like this was the Verbal section of the SAT. Of course he had scars. She had scars. ‘Scar’ is to ‘tattoo’ as ‘Love’ is to... Something.

 

Mulder ran his thumb over the tattoo again. She kissed him, and his higher brain functions sputtered to a halt. The next time he could think, dawn had broken in The Happiest Place on Earth. William stirred in the adjoining hotel room. Coffee brewed, birds chirped, and Mulder woke alone in her bed. On her dresser, the Dumbo made of a hand towel looked shocked by this turn of events. The steam from the bathroom smelled of her fancy organic shampoo, and he heard Dana brushing her teeth efficiently; in the bedroom, Mulder had stared at the ceiling in disbelief and realized any worries about protecting himself from sexually transmitted diseases were belated.

 

"Don't look at me like you know me," she'd ordered Mulder a minute later, gesturing with her clean toothbrush for emphasis.

 

Just once, he'd like her to have an identity crisis without letting some man stick his penis or tattoo needle in her.

 

Apparently, ‘Scar’ was to ‘Tattoo’ as ‘Love’ was to ‘Unrequited.’ Or ‘Sad.’

 

"Why aren't you and Scully married?" William's voice asked, bringing Mulder's attention back to the present.

 

The overhead lights in the drugstore seemed too bright, and Mulder blinked a few times. He emptied the basket onto the checkout counter and, reaching for his wallet, answered, "It didn't work out, son."

 

"Why not?"

 

"It just didn't."

 

After a long, wonderful summer on Martha's Vineyard, they'd returned to her apartment and the real world. She started work at Quantico part-time, and he grudgingly agreed to a desk and some office hours at the ISU. They resumed their former lives as if they'd never been assigned to the X-files; they were still Agent Mulder the profiler and Dr. Scully the forensic pathologist.

 

She taught and spent two days a week doing autopsies. The Bureau sent Mulder on cases in Arizona, Maine, and North Dakota. Skinner approached him about running the ISU, swearing it somehow involved fewer hours, less travel, and no actual supervising. Skinner turned out to be a big fat liar, and Mulder's sixteen hours a week increased to four long days, plus endless e-mails and phone calls he'd handled from home with a toddler underfoot.

 

Before long, Dana would be busy with William as Mulder left for work on Monday. Mulder was in bed by the time she got home on Thursday. They saw less of each other and communicated more via e-mail and notes on her kitchen counter.

 

His flashbacks and nightmares started again.

 

He hadn't told her, and in retrospect, he should have. He pushed people away when he needed them the most - that was the marriage counselor's opinion the one time he went with Diana. He should have told Dana, but he hadn't known where to begin. Dana baked bread from scratch and took William to Kindermusik and, while Mulder was on a case in Manhattan, faxed him a shopping list for the new Whole Foods store. He had to put the profile on hold to buy whole-grain pasta somehow more organic than the organic pasta in DC. Dana met her mother for lunch and went to the beach with her family. She visited her sister's grave every week and mourned her father and became close friends with Agent Reyes. She still read every scientific and medical journal on the planet, and twice a week she taught a few classes and cut up dead people for the FBI.

 

Mulder didn't know how to explain to her after being infected with an alien virus, shot a couple times, abducted by a UFO, and tortured to death, his biggest concern wasn't reducing his carbon footprint.

 

No Rosetta stone bridged the gap between what he'd experienced and what Dana had read about. She was smart and beautiful and funny, and she wanted her boyfriend - the title he'd settled on - to stop for diapers on the way home and remember to take out the trash, not to be afraid of an alien boogeyman.

 

He had a dresser drawer in her bedroom and a shelf in the medicine cabinet. His suits hung in her closet, but his books and furniture stayed in Alexandria. When they had to start wading through the piles of baby sundries, he let the lease on his apartment go and bought a house closer to Quantico. In retrospect, no, she hadn't specifically agreed to the house, but she'd looked at it and it was a nice house and it wasn't an hour drive from work.

 

That fall, as William approached his second birthday, Mulder gradually moved into the new house, and Dana didn't. She came over. She had clothes and makeup and a blow dryer there, and spent the night, for a while, but she never moved into his house anymore than he ever moved into her apartment.

 

They never had a fight. No 'we need to talk' or 'I made us an appointment with a marriage counselor,' conversation. They slowly, in the most adult, friendly manner imaginable, drifted out of being lovers and back to being friends, with a child in common. One weekend, she worked on a research paper and couldn't come over. Mulder kept William and let her work. The next weekend, she had the baby while Mulder hung out with The Gunmen; Mulder didn't invite her to come along because she didn't particularly like The Gunmen.

 

He and Dana saw each other because of William, but soon a month passed without them spending a night together, and a season, and eventually all they had in common were a preschooler and working for the FBI. Sometimes meeting for lunch if he wanted her opinion on a case. And, in the last few months, if the moon was right, the occasional passionate roll in the hay.

 

They'd achieved a post-modern, passive-aggressive split to do their old partnership proud.

 

"Don't you love Scully?" William asked as they left the drugstore.

 

"Of course I love Scully," Mulder answered, which was the truth. "But I also know Scully, and I know you'd better eat the candy bar before we get back to the motel."

 

****

 

In the dense forest around Bellefleur, Oregon, citizens and search parties had found five bodies. At least two more bodies awaited discovery, according to the pattern. The corpses were completely unmarked, and none of the victims had a clear cause of death, though the M.E. guessed exposure. The same thing happened in Arizona last year, in the spring of 2006: seven bodies, with the estimated times of death spanning a week. The remote Hopi tribe in Oriabi Village, Arizona, hadn't cooperated with the local authorities, so details from the first deaths were sketchy. The theme was the same, though. At least seven victims died during seven days in May.

 

The victims weren't alien abductees. No abductions had occurred in years. Mulder never heard whispers of Alex Krycek or CGB Spender or the alien-human hybridization experiments. No super-soldiers. People still reported the odd UFO sighting, and a handful of doomsday cults persisted, but Agents Doggett and Reyes spent most of their time on poltergeists and mutants while the X-files in the 'Syndicate' and 'Purity' sections gathered dust. Agent Reyes worked part-time these days, and spent the rest of her week chasing a two-year-old girl who bore a striking resemblance to her partner Agent Doggett.

 

Skinner had asked Mulder if the drinking fountain outside the basement office in the Hoover building could have fertility drugs in the water.

 

Mulder watched the photographs of the Oregon crime scenes flash onto the wall of the deputies' cramped headquarters. Each photo showed a nude, gray body sprawled peacefully on the new green grass of spring. In the metal chairs, six FBI agents and three deputies listened and took notes as the SAC briefed them, telling them what they already knew.

 

The FBI had no clue what was happening. Or why. Or how to prevent it from happening again. If they didn't figure it out and the pattern continued, the next opportunity would be May 2008, when the bodies started appearing someplace else.

 

While the Bellefleur team brought Mulder up to date, Dana had William at the motel. After the briefing they'd trade; he'd take their son while she went to the morgue for a few hours to examine the victims.

 

At Quantico, Mulder preferred Dana do the autopsies in the cases he profiled, and had her review old autopsy reports or the incomprehensible jargon the forensic labs spit out. His secretary - a 24-year-old, gum-chewing, magenta-haired fount of romantic wisdom - poked her pierced nose in and shared her opinion of his requests. Secretary Diane could roll her eyes and sigh all she liked; Mulder valued Dana's expertise. Dana might not remember being Agent Scully, but she still thought like her. Except regarding the paranormal. If Mulder mentioned zombies or ghosts in Dana's autopsy bay, the scientific scorn could blister in seconds.

 

They hadn't worked a case together in the field since before her second abduction. Since before William's birth. Dana didn't do field work; she didn't even carry a weapon. When Skinner called him about this case, Mulder suggested Dana and William spend another day at Disneyworld and fly back to DC. Dana offered to accompany him to Oregon, though Mulder didn't see the necessity. William had school, and any corpse Mulder wanted Dana to examine could be shipped back to Quantico.

 

"It will be like old times," she countered last night, after her second rum and coke and about nine minutes before she started stripping off his clothing.

 

Right. Like those old times she didn't remember.

 

The iPhone in Mulder’s pocket vibrated and began to play Blondie's "Call Me" loudly. He scrambled to silence it, still not sure how to operate a phone with one button. Heads turned, and SAC Boyle stopped speaking. Letting William play with the settings on the new phone was unwise.

 

The text on the screen read "time out 4 fib bout candy bar rapper not fare in trap ment help"

 

Mulder frowned and texted back, with the phone automatically correcting his spelling. "Don't lie and stop using Mommy's phone or you're in more trouble"

 

He made sure the volume was turned off, but as he started to put the phone away, its screen brightened again.

 

"Evry 1 out 2 get me :( "

 

Mulder typed back, "Some days seem that way, buddy," and resumed watching the white cinderblock wall. The SAC showed the group a projected photo of a woman's nude corpse lying face down, as if sleeping. It looked like a painting, or artsy porn. Her body was perfect in every way, except for being dead.

 

Friends or family had identified all the bodies. Some, like Mr. Johnson, were easy victims at the fringe of the community: alcoholics, drifters, prostitutes. Karen West worked as an RN and competed in triathlons, though. She disappeared four days ago while running alone in the forest a few miles from her home. The fourth victim last year, a solo male backpacker, was a well-known author. The file listed another Oriabi Village victim as a local, successful Navajo artist.

 

Mulder knew the victims: where they'd lived, what they'd eaten the day they died, and whether or not their neighbors and co-workers liked them. Bank account balances, cell phone records, sexual proclivities, mental and medical health histories. The unnaturally dead didn't get to keep secrets. He knew who had scabies or hemorrhoids or herpes, and who'd ingested Prozac or alcohol or opiates in their final hours. He knew the pretty woman on the screen died with semen from two men in her vagina and no trace of hormonal contraceptives in her body.  Her day planner had noted the date of her last period. Mulder knew Karen West had been unlikely to get pregnant, but still willing to take the risk. She'd been with her ex-husband, a surgeon, as well as her boyfriend, an executive at the hospital where she worked. Both men said the sexual encounters were consensual and swore they loved her.

 

The Portland FBI agent who conducted the interviews that afternoon believed both men told the truth.

 

Ten minutes later, Mulder's pocket vibrated again. This time, the text message was, "What did you feed this child? Crack cocaine? Will swears his math homework is done and you have it. Your son called me 'harsh' because I won't let him watch 'Stargate.'"

 

"Subject sugared up & AFAIK unreliable," Mulder texted back, grinning. "Secure your cell. Withhold SciFi until visual on math. Got your back & I'll be there ASAP. AML"

 

The screen brightened again a few seconds later. "AML?"

 

He hesitated, but typed, "Ask me later"

 

If Dana looked it up, that would be somewhere on the list of what AML meant.

 

"Is everything okay, Agent Mulder?" the SAC asked. Mulder realized the briefing had come to a halt. Every eye in the room focused on him again.

 

Mulder nodded, turned the screen off, and slid the fancy phone back in his pocket for good.

 

Right. Like old times.

 

****

 

William was Her Baby in the original plan, and Mulder had respected Scully's wishes. After one "wild and passionate and perhaps ill-considered" night, Mulder's contribution to paternity ended. At least it ended in Scully's view, and Mulder didn't get a vote. If people asked - and everyone from Melvin Frohike to Walter Skinner cornered him and asked the moment Mulder returned from the land of the only mostly dead - Mulder didn't answer.

 

Even after Scully's abduction, he took care of Her Baby as her friend and former partner. Except for the pediatrician's office. He couldn't hedge on consent forms. Either Mulder signed the forms as William's father and the baby got vaccinated and checked out by the doctor, or Mulder took an infant home and tried to keep everyone from coughing on him until the spaceship returned Mommy. He signed the forms.

 

Mulder never, directly or obliquely, to any person or at any time, denied he was William's biological father. When creating Her Baby had involved a Petri dish and a turkey baster, he'd stipulated one thing. He'd be the silent partner, but out of love for her and to protect her child. She'd be an excellent mother, but if Her Baby ever needed His Father, Mulder would be there.

 

He'd like that noted in the transcript of their relationship.

 

William was nine months old when they returned from the Vineyard. Mulder had dropped by his old apartment one morning to collect his mail and check on his lone surviving fish. He noticed his neighbor, Mr. Pao, had left a cardboard box on the coffee table, along with a summer's worth of junk mail. The box was addressed to Special Agent Fox Mulder, with a return address in Bellefleur, Oregon. The box felt surprisingly lightweight, and since it didn't tick or drip blood or Purity, he gave William a cracker to slobber on, pointed the baby toward the kitchen, and opened the box.

 

It had been full of baby clothes and toys and accoutrements, and Mulder's first reaction was fear. He put monsters behind bars; he didn't want an Internet search of his name producing William's photograph and home address. Some digging in the box turned up a thank-you note from Teresa Nemman Hoese and pictures of her with her little girl, and Mulder relaxed.

 

About every six months, another box of hand-me-downs arrived. The ballerina outfit wasn't much use, but Teresa sent L.L. Bean snowsuits and books and wooden puzzles. Her daughter outgrew a cowboy hat and a surprising number of flannel shirts and overalls, even for a little girl growing up in rural Oregon.

 

Last year, Dana came to pick William up on a Sunday night, and asked why their five-year-old son wore kelly green snow boots and a lime green winter coat. "His are wet and these were dry," Mulder had told her.

 

Now, Teresa Hoese sat on the front porch of her father's house, as if waiting for Mulder and William. She looked much like she did the last time he saw her, with long, dark hair and brown eyes far more expressive than the rest of her face.

 

On a tire swing in the yard, beneath a long swirl of tangled chestnut hair, a little girl spun wildly. As they approached, the girl stopped twirling and watched them. She leaned back from one side of the tire while her legs dangled from the other.

 

"I was hoping you'd come by," Teresa said. She stood and came to the edge of the porch. "Special Agent Mulder."

 

As they shook hands, her grip seemed delicate, but everything about her seemed delicate. He wondered if he'd be delicate, too, if he'd been abducted a half-dozen times and had the love of his life come back as a super-soldier.

 

"This is Mrs. Hoese, William," Mulder responded. He put his hand on William's shoulder. "She's an old friend of mine."

 

Teresa smiled, and William smiled enigmatically, the way his mother did. "We brought you a thank-you present," his son said, producing a plastic shopping bag from behind his back. "Thank you for the toys and clothes, Mrs. Hoese."

 

They'd practiced the manners on the walk from the motel. William got his smart mouth honestly, and he got it from both sides.

 

"Stella," Teresa said, motioning for her daughter to come over. "This is Special Agent Mulder and his son William. Special Agent Mulder knew your daddy."

 

"What makes you special?" her daughter asked, not seeming to notice the present.

 

"No one's ever said. Being forty-five with no gut and a full head of hair?" Mulder answered, nullifying William's politeness.

 

"You're tall," the girl told him. "My daddy was tall."

 

"He was," Mulder assured her, though he didn't remember Deputy Ray Hoese being particularly tall.

 

She appeared to like Mulder’s answer, and invited William to play. William didn't hesitate. He'd been cooped up on the airplane, a rental car, and the motel with boring adults for playmates. Like Mulder, regardless of the carrot or the stick, William's best behavior was a limited time offer. The plastic shopping bag hit the sidewalk with a thud.

 

"We came by to give you-" Mulder started, but William headed for the tire swing and Teresa gestured for Mulder to sit down. Dana was at the local morgue, examining the bodies with Teresa's father, Dr. Nemman, who remained the county medical examiner and a Grade A asshole. They wouldn't be done for several hours, and Dana would be fuming for at least half an hour afterward. "We can't stay long," he said instead.

 

"The case, I know. When I heard- When my father told me about what was happening in the forest, I wondered if you'd come," Teresa said awkwardly.

 

He offered her the bag William dropped. "I don't know who or what a Hanna Montana is," Mulder said, showing her the new karaoke machine, "but the lady at the Disney store assured me I couldn't go wrong buying it for a seven-year-old girl. Hopefully, it comes with earplugs and isn't easily breakable."

 

"She'll love it. Thank you. Thank you both so much. Please, sit down."

 

She resumed her place on one end of the porch swing, and he sat on the other end. Her feet were bare, and her toes brushed against the painted boards as they swayed. She'd painted her toenails the palest shade of pink.

 

"My father said he was meeting with Agent Scully this evening," she told him, as they watched the kids play. "Do, do they know what's happening yet? Who's doing this?"

 

"No," he admitted.

 

She wore a long-sleeved sweater, and she pulled the cuffs own over her hands and held them in place with her fists, the way a child would. "You don't think these are abductees being returned?"

 

"No," Mulder assured her.

 

The swing swayed for a while as the sun set and the air cooled. The moon rose, silvery and three-quarters full over the forest.

 

"He's so handsome," she said next, watching William. "Your son."

 

"He's very aware of that," Mulder responded.

 

"I thought your and Agent Scully's baby might be a boy. I hoped, at least."

 

He shifted in the swing, turning toward her. "How did you know about him?"

 

"My court hearing - after I was returned, the hearing to get my daughter back - when you testified over the telephone, I could hear a baby crying in the background. I, I remembered you watching Agent Scully holding Stella, before you and I were taken. I remembered you on the ship, how you fought Them and struggled to stay alive. I remembered Agent Scully in the compound after I was returned, searching for you. Finding you. Your body," she amended.

 

He looked away, watching William closely and Teresa not at all. The nightmares still came, on occasion, if he was tired and had something on his mind. He still had scars, if he looked closely. On occasion, he still looked in the mirror and momentarily saw a dead man looking back.

 

"On the Internet," she continued, "on the abductee message boards, people talked about your return, and her abduction. Before it was deleted, I saw a thread about Agent Scully being pregnant. I heard a baby crying while you were trying to talk with the judge, and the baby's mother didn't come to take it, I- I knew." She released her sleeves and picked at her skirt, seeming uncomfortable. "Do you think I'm a crazy stalker girl?"

 

"No," he said honestly. "Resourceful, though."

 

"Agent Scully is an instructor at the FBI academy," Teresa said stiltedly. "Neither of you are assigned to the X-files division anymore."

 

"The Internet again?"

 

"The FBI website," she confessed. "I looked up your names."

 

The tree leaves rustled, the chains on the porch swing squeaked, and her naked feet scuffed against the floor. A thirty-something year-old woman, she still lived in her father's house. She never remarried, despite being a passably pretty female in a town full of single men. Teresa probably didn't know Mulder knew, but her father had co-guardianship of her daughter. Teresa spent time in a mental hospital two years ago. Mulder had talked with that judge too before the hospital agreed to release her.

 

"No, someone else answers the phone in the X-files office these days," he answered eventually. "Two pretty competent someones."

 

"Do they ever hear anything about Ray? Is he..." She stopped, composed herself, and said, "I like to pretend, sometimes, I'll open the front door and see him again."

 

"If you ever see him again, what you see won't be your Ray," he cautioned her. "He'll look like himself, but he won't be."

 

"If I ever see him again, I won't care," she said. Despite her death wish, he envied the certainty in her voice.

 

The stars came out, each a little beacon in the dark sky. Mulder thought he saw Venus, and Aldebaran - the brightest star in Taurus. He made out the beginning of Orion, the hunter, in the west. In the east, Ophiuchus still lurked below the horizon, and the thought still made him shiver.

 

In the yard, in the gathering darkness, William and Stella took turns on the tire swing, pretending they were on a pirate ship, swinging from the rigging. One pushed while the other spun through the air and held on for dear life, their laughter like bells. It reminded Mulder of himself and Samantha playing, way back when the world was innocent and new.

 

These children - the miracle children of a generation of abductees for whom the next experiment might come at any time - whatever the cost, he wanted them to be fearless.

 

The creature Ray Hoese became still lived, as far as Mulder knew, as did Billy Miles. The super-soldiers were undying, unstoppable killing machines, and if Scully hadn't intervened, Mulder would have become one of them. The universe waited for something: a signal, a date - he wasn't sure. One day, though, when They realized Mulder eliminated all other options, the super-soldiers might come for William again. Or for Scully. Or for Mulder.

 

The times he'd tried to explain his fears to Dana, she offered to write him a prescription for anti-psychotic medication.

 

"I hated her," Teresa said, as if telling a secret. "Agent Scully. For a long time I hated her. Agent Scully could save you, get you back, but there was no one to save Ray."

 

Scully hadn't gotten him back, Mulder wanted to tell her. Scully hadn't gotten her Mulder back any more than he got his Scully back. His Scully didn't even come to him in dreams anymore. His Scully was gone, the way Teresa's Ray Hoese was gone. Like Mulder’s sister and father and six months of his life, his Scully was something else They took from him.

 

Mulder answered instead, "She did everything she could. Everyone did. Some things are irreparable."

 

"I know," she said, but her eyes looked lost.

 

****

 

They stayed longer than Mulder intended, and about one minute longer than he should have.

 

He'd brought a jacket for William, but the night was cool and sliding toward cold. In his shirt sleeves, Mulder needed to move quickly in order to stay warm. Unfortunately, as they walked back to the motel, William found a good stick and showed off his pirate moves, stopping to challenge every fence post they passed to a duel. If he found a stump or a railing, William had to scramble up on it and announce, "A second lamp in the belfry burns!" Since their trip to Boston in April and a dose of living history, Mulder couldn't convince his son Paul Revere was a patriot, not a pirate. Either the tri-corner hat and knickers threw him, or, like his mother, William made up his mind and chose to ignore the facts right in front of his eyes.

 

"Do you like Mrs. Hoese?" William asked, after slaying a pine tree.

 

"I've known her a long time. She's a nice lady. It was nice of her to send you all of those things: the clothes, the toys. Do you like Stella?"

 

"Are you going to marry Mrs. Hoese?"

 

"No," Mulder said in surprise. He put his hands in his pockets. "No, I'm not going to marry her."

 

The moon loomed over the trees, following them curiously.

 

The stick became a club and helped an aluminum can keep up with them. William announced, "You kissed her. On the lips."

 

Also, like his mother, the kid seldom missed a trick.

 

"She kissed me," Mulder stipulated. "But she shouldn't have, and I won't let her do it again. She's, she's had some bad things happen to her, and she's fragile, William. I didn't want to hurt her feelings, but I don't want her kissing me, either."

 

"You kissed Miss Stephanie last week. The pretty running lady," William observed. "On the lips. For a long time. I saw you."

 

"You did?"

 

William nodded knowingly.

 

Since there didn't seem to be any way to plead innocent, Mulder answered, "Mommy runs, too. Just not as far and as fast as Miss Stephanie."

 

"Do you want Scully to kiss you?"

 

"All this talk of kissing - How many girls have you kissed?" Mulder asked, sidestepping the question.

 

"Two. The same as you."

 

"Two?" He sounded shocked. "Two? Which two?" he demanded. "Barbara Marie? Did you kiss Barbara Marie?"

 

"I'm not telling. Uncle Frohike says a gentleman doesn't tell."

 

William missed the can with his stick, so Mulder gave it a kick to move it along. He considered asking William if Mommy had been kissing anyone, but Dana was smart enough to remember their son could see the school parking lot from his classroom window.

 

"Uncle Frohike wants Scully to kiss him," William informed him.

 

Mulder chuckled. "Uncle Frohike wants any woman to kiss him," he responded, and thankfully, William declared battle on a telephone pole and let the topic drop.

 

****

 

On Monday, normally Mulder had William. That wasn't carved in stone, though. Often, both of them 'had' William at T-Ball or a checkup or something for school. The schedule fluctuated if Mulder worked on a case out of town, but friction was rare. Dana tolerated Mulder being at her apartment, and, in turn, Mulder nodded submissively as she droned on about the scientific research on junk food and too much TV and neural development - and he got William a DVD and McNuggets on the way home.

 

If William was happy and healthy, the adults would work it out.

 

"Who says we don't communicate? We don't need seminars," he teased Dana a few years ago. She'd looked at him blankly.

 

Right.

 

He could have explained, but there would have been friction.

 

Several times - Christmas, birthdays - Mulder spent the night at Scully's apartment or her mother's house, sleeping on the couch. Dana stayed at Mulder's house several days last fall, while both Mulder and William had the stomach flu. He'd liked having her there again, even with all the puking.

 

"Marry her," Langly had advised him. "You'd save on income taxes, and it's not like you could have any less sex."

 

Last February, the mother of all snowstorms hit DC while a serial killer hitchhiked his way across sunny LA, leaving a trail of women's bodies behind him. Mulder got William and Dana home safely, and waited in vain for a flight out of Dulles or BWI. He couldn't get a hotel room or get home, and Dana offered her sofa. He hadn't reached her apartment until midnight. He was cold, wet, tired, and pissed off at Mother Nature, US Airways, and life in general.

 

Dana had, to his complete surprise and in the nicest way imaginable, invited Mulder in and made it better. Much, much better. Toe-curlingly, back-archingly gaspingly orgasmically better.

 

In the morning, as all three of them ate organic Cheerios at her kitchen table, he'd wondered if the chip in her head was trying to get her pregnant again. The snow and ice closed the airports and made the streets impassable. Mulder, William, and Dana spent the day making a lopsided snow army, eating toasted marshmallows, and defending a pillow fort in case aliens or Darth Vader invaded Scully's living room. William's fort included pretend surveillance cameras and motion detectors, and his mother requested, yet again, their son stop spending so much time with "those Gunmen people."

 

Mulder read William to sleep while Dana did dishes by candlelight. Afterward, all she had to do was take Mulder by the hand and say, "Come to bed," and that night was a double-feature. Her body constituted the Bermuda Triangle for his better judgment and moral resolve. Someone should open an X-file. He hadn't gotten much sleep, but he hadn't much cared at the time, either.

 

Sunday, BWI opened and Mulder was in the air by dawn, headed for LA. Dana never acknowledged either night by the light of day. Mulder never decided if she still loved him, wanted him, merely wanted to get laid, or if she'd been bored because the cable went out.

 

Mulder told himself he was too old for this push-me, pull-me bullshit, and managed to work up a fair amount of self-righteous annoyance with her - until the previous night in Disneyland. But no more. What happened at Disney stayed at Disney.

 

He and Dana had a good working relationship - at Quantico and as parents. It was good for Mulder, good for William. He and Dana Scully worked well as partners. Including as partners in bed.

 

But the past was water under the bridge. Mulder wouldn't risk going down in flames to scratch an itch.

 

He told himself in the motel’s bathroom mirror. No more. He'd made up his mind and armed himself with cautionary figures of speech.

 

Since the calendar read Monday, William slept in Mulder's motel room, sprawled across the bed in his Star Wars pajamas. The meeting to go over the case was in Scully's room, next door.

 

Mulder brushed his teeth because dental hygiene was important, and he rinsed off and changed clothes to be more comfortable.

 

He did not shave.

 

Absolutely not, he told the man in the mirror. Not again.

 

Even his reflection thought he was full of shit.

 

****

 

"Hook me up and turn me on, Doctor Scully," Mulder said as she opened the door. He held up the receiver for the old baby monitor.

 

"Gee, you're getting old. I remember being able to charge you up and have you go for hours," she said. "Why don't you come in while you think up a snappy comeback?"

 

"You're not funny, Dana."

 

"I thought I was pretty funny." She gestured to the table beside the window. "There's a free outlet there. I had my laptop plugged in earlier. Is Will asleep?"

 

"Our little pirate Paul Revere is down for the count."

 

Mulder plugged in the monitor and switched it on so he could hear William's slow breathing over the soft static.

 

Dana had changed into pajama bottoms and a loose FBI sweatshirt he thought used to be his. She wore her hair longer and kept it a darker auburn. Tonight, she had it twisted up and clipped on top of her head. She'd been working. Photos littered her bed, a collage of death. He saw her notes on the dresser, and it looked like she'd been comparing them with the Oregon and Arizona autopsy reports.

 

"Anything?" he asked hopefully. He sank into a chair. "Please, tell me you have something, before I run out of clean underwear."

 

"I've concluded your assessment of Dr. Nemman is correct. He's a Grade A jackass."

 

"Well, our cases go better once you start agreeing with me, so we'll call this progress." Mulder toed off his running shoes. "Did you discover anything about our victims?"

 

"He may be a jackass, but Dr. Nemman's autopsy findings, so far, are the same as mine. Each of those bodies should still be alive."

 

"There was nothing?" He opened a file. "No cause of death?”

 

She sat Indian-style on the edge of the bed. "Obviously, there was some cause of death. I sent samples back to the lab, but it will be a few days. Some tests take time to run. I'm sure there's some toxin-"

 

"A toxin killing without harming the body at all? Are you sure the victims are dead?"

 

She gave him a scornful look. "I autopsied one of them and saw slides of tissue from the others' dissected hearts and brains."

 

"And you find that conclusive?"

 

Her scornful look became withering. "This was our partnership?"

 

"Not all the time. Sometimes, one of us was in a coma."

 

He got a smile - the kind still making his stomach flip-flop.

 

Your powers have no effect here, he told her silently.

 

"As best as I can determine, with the facilities available to me in Nowhere, Oregon... There are no contusions or edema or needle marks or signs of a struggle," she recited clinically. "Nothing unexplained about their internal organs. No commonly known poison in their systems. They weren't drugged or smothered or garroted with a soft cord or drowned. They weren't even dragged through the forest. I've reviewed the autopsies on the Arizona victims, too, and I can't give you a cause of death for any of them. It looks like those men and women walked into the forest or the desert of their own volition, laid down, and God turned off their life."

 

He nodded. "Okay. And either they or God took off their clothes."

 

"Now that's not funny, Mulder."

 

"I wasn't trying to be funny, Dana."

 

She gave him a prickly look.

 

Rather than debate the point with her, he requested, "Tell me what you know about the number seven. Aside from being Mickey Mantle's uniform number. I've concluded that's not relevant to this case."

 

"I'm not saying there's no cause of death," she argued.

 

"Funny, it sounds like it's exactly what you're saying."

 

She repeated, as if he hadn't heard her the first time, "I'm waiting on lab results."

 

"Fine. If your labs turn up anything, let me know. Fifteen years Dana, and if you say there's no cause of death, I'm going with it."

 

"Going where?" she shot back. "Into the great beyond?  Into 'The Twilight Zone?'"

 

"Yeah." He paused. "No fang marks, no bite marks?"

 

"You think vampires are doing this?"

 

"Traditional sanguinarian vampires? I don't think it's likely," Mulder conceded. He propped his feet up on the edge of the bed, next to her. "Seven. They found seven bodies in Arizona. If it is seven bodies, why seven? The seven deadly sins, the seven days of creation. Hindus have the seven chakras, Islam has seven levels of heaven. It's highly symbolic in the Torah, too. To the Japanese, there are seven lucky gods. Pick any culture, any age, and seven will hold some special meaning. You couldn't find another number holding so much symbolism."

 

"Mammals have seven cervical vertebrae. There are the seven sisters of the Pleiades," she supplied. "There are seven planets visible to the naked eye."

 

"There are seven days in a week, each named for the seven classical planets. Are they all visible right now?"

 

"All the planets are visible 24 percent of the time from somewhere on Earth - but not to the same observer and certainly not to the naked eye. The last time all seven were visible to a single observer was in 1982."

 

"Hence, John Belushi's death and the third Rocky movie's still-unexplained success."

 

She shook her head, and a long piece of auburn hair escaped the plastic clip. "Doesn't 'The Wrath of Khan' redeem the year for you?"

 

"Not fully," he said blandly. "Nor did 'Blues Brothers 2000.' What about a planetary alignment? A syzygy?"

 

She sighed. "I know there was supposed to be a tight seven-planet alignment in 1994, but also it was the first one in 300 years."

 

There wasn't ‘supposed to be’ an alignment; there had been. He remembered sitting on the hood of their rental car, watching as she pointed at the night sky over the Nevada Desert. Between two and five hundred billion stars in the Milky Way alone, and by chance, the two of them happened to live on a Class M planet near one of them. The conversation happened right after her first abduction, and he remembered thanking whatever god might be out there she'd come back.

 

Mulder remembered Scully informing him 'Class M planet' was a term from Star Trek, not NASA.

 

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, he reminded himself. He wasn't the droid she was looking for.

 

"Seven bodies, seven days, all in May," he said aloud, but more to himself than her. "May is rebirth, renewal, fertility. The seventh month of the calendar with 31 days. The seventh child after six daughters will be a werewolf. The seventh son of a seventh son will be a healer or a seer. Or a vampire, in certain cultures."

 

"I think it's safe to rule out werewolves and vampires, Mulder."

 

She put her hand on top of his sock-covered foot, resting it there affectionately. He could have moved his foot, but he didn't.

 

Of all the random thoughts, Mulder realized he hadn't called Stephanie to tell her he couldn't meet her in the morning. Usually, on Tuesday morning, he took William to school and met Steph for a run, after she dropped off her son. They didn't have extra-curricular activities off the field - no horizontal ones, at least. Stephanie ran fast enough to keep up with him, had the morning free, and he liked she'd end a ten-mile run with a trip to Dunkin' Donuts. And, as William noted, she was easy on the eye.

 

Come seven-fifteen AM, Stephanie would be waiting in the school parking lot in Virginia, and Mulder would still be in Oregon.

 

He looked at his watch. Virginia was on Eastern Standard Time. Three hours earlier than Oregon; he'd be calling Steph at dinner time. He'd send a text. Later. Right now, he and Scully were working on a case.

 

Mulder flipped through the file, comparing pictures of one body to the next. Aside from being within a fifty-mile radius of each other when they'd died, the victims had no common denominator. They hadn't known the same people, had the same hobbies, or shared the same vices. They hadn't even all been from the same community.

 

A car pulled into the parking lot, shining its headlights into the room. He heard the echo of the engine over the baby monitor a half-second after the ignition turned off.

 

"Scientifically, seven is equally significant," Dana told him. "Pick a branch. It's a neutral Ph. The atomic number of nitrogen. There are seven basic types of viruses. Seven units of measurement, seven colors of the rainbow. It's a prime number: a Mersenne prime, a double Mersenne prime, a Woodall prime, a factorial prime, and a safe prime. And a happy prime number," she added.

 

"What makes it happy?"

 

"On 'Doctor Who,' the number 379 helped keep them from being hurled into a star. That probably made it happy."

 

Mulder put down the file. "Dana, you're way hotter than either of Ayden J's mommies."

 

Over the monitor, he heard William shift in bed, and both of them waited a moment, listening. William was their common denominator; if not for their son, Dana wouldn't be in Bellefleur. She wouldn't have been part of Mulder's life at all, except as an old partner and friend she knew she had but didn't remember.

 

"We were good together," she said casually. "As partners."

 

"We were."

 

She held his feet to the fire, gave him a place to stand. He'd said she completed him, pointed him toward true north; she'd said Mulder made her feel like she was perpetually falling.

 

"Are you staying here tonight?" she asked, toying with the sole of his foot. "In case there is a vampire out there?"

 

"You're scared of vampires?"

 

"No. But I thought you might be."

 

Once more, Mulder told himself. If William didn't wake up and the world didn't end.

 

"Fire," he told her, and moved his foot from the rough bedspread to her warm lap. "I'm afraid of fire."

 

****

 

If Mulder had it to do over again, he would have kept his mouth shut and eaten the burnt bacon.

 

His X-files partner Scully could order takeout with the same skill Julia Child could whip up beef bourguignon, but the woman who came back to him could cook.

 

Technically, they both cooked. Mulder could read directions and add water as necessary and bake until golden brown. During his various convalescences, Scully made him peach pancakes and lasagna and chicken soup. She’d stayed home right after William's birth, and something often simmered on the stove. Clearly, she could cook, but it would be more correct to say Dana Scully 2.0 did cook. She could make fancy French pastries and chicken cordon bleu and gazpacho and things he'd thought magically appeared in restaurants.

 

"It's simple chemistry," she'd inform him.

 

Mulder gained six pounds the summer on Martha's Vineyard, thanks to her simple chemistry.

 

He'd fed William while she attended Mass, but Mulder's breakfast consisted of two cups of coffee. Getting the baby's cereal off of Scully's kitchen floor, the high chair, the window, the wall, and the two of them was the next step, so he and his son took a two-for-one shower. When Mulder exited the bathroom in her apartment with William and smelled bacon frying, his belly did a happy little flip-flop. Mulder had barely seen her during daylight hours in the past week, and a long Sunday brunch sounded wonderful.

 

"You are the reason I'm getting a gut, woman," he accused her as he carried William into the kitchen. He'd put on jeans and a T-shirt, but no socks. Winter loomed, but the apartment was warm, so he left the chub scout in a diaper and a onesie. William had started walking, so padding on the backside was the most important thing.

 

Mulder didn't ask her about Mass, because then she'd tell him about Mass. Scully 2.0 didn't share her predecessor's broadmindedness regarding Catholicism. If the church doors opened, Dana went, and if Mulder opened his mouth about it - even to comment - he courted trouble.

 

She put her hand on his stomach as he collected a belated good-morning kiss. "You can go for a run after breakfast."

 

He liked watching her in the kitchen; she worked with the same precision she did in the lab: slicing and dicing and coming up with something tasty rather than a cause of death. That morning, she had French toast going on one burner and bacon on the other.

 

"Do you wanna come?" he asked. He shifted William to his other arm and picked through the plate of hot bacon on the counter. "Bundle up the baby and take the jogging stroller?"

 

"It's so motivating when you lap me, Mulder."

 

"If you want lapped, we can stay here and do that after breakfast," he teased. "Sex is also aerobic."

 

"I have a date with Mom at the market. I haven't seen her all week."

 

Mulder had looked out her kitchen window and didn't comment. The November day was cold, with a gray sky and wet sidewalks and a steady drizzle raining down on the brown piles of leaves.

 

He shrugged his shoulder. "Your loss. Dana, did you fry the entire package of bacon?"

 

"I'm expecting leftovers, if that's what you're asking." She turned the first slices of French toast over, and they sizzled in the pan.

 

The empty package in the kitchen trash indicated the bacon came from organic, local, happy pigs - right up until someone shot them and cured their corpses with applewood smoke and sea salt. It sounded delicious, and Mulder picked through the pile of bacon again, trying not to burn his fingers while he looked for a good slice. She fished the last pieces out of the skillet, all of them evenly brown, and moved the skillet off the burner.

 

"This is all there is?" he asked, trying not to sound disappointed. He didn't remember the last time he ate bacon, and he'd dedicated a little pool of slobber in his mouth to pricy pig slices.

 

"What's wrong?"

 

"It's all really done."

 

She rested the spatula against the edge of the pan and turned her attention toward him. "Is it burnt?"

 

"No, just done." He picked up a promising piece, noted the brown edge, and put it back on the plate with its dark brothers and sisters.

 

"What's wrong with it?"

 

"I like rare bacon. But I'll eat this," he'd said, trying to back-peddle. "It's fine."

 

"There's no such thing as rare bacon. Who likes undercooked bacon?" she wanted to know.

 

"Me. My father. My grandfather. And there are probably three or four others among the six billion people out there. Usually, you pull out a few slices for me early on and fry yours to a crisp. You lecture me about trichinosis, if that makes you feel better."

 

"Since when?"

 

"Since always," he said before he thought. "You've watched me hassle waitresses about this for years. You don't remem-"

 

He looked up. She watched him with the same expression she had as he’d driven her home from the hospital the past spring, after her abduction. The 'who is this man' expression.

 

Dana Scully possessed the most expressive eyes of any woman in the world, and he read fear and anger and hurt in them. Mulder stood in her kitchen on a lazy Sunday morning. His running shoes were beside the front door, and his NICAP coffee mug rested in the dish drain. He held a child - their child - who had started to walk. Dana Scully knew his Social Security number and blood type and shoe size, but she didn't know Mulder. She tried, and he tried, but the common bond, forged in fire after years as partners, wasn't there.

 

Mulder kept telling himself she was still Scully: brilliant, loyal, beautiful. But gentler, less batted around by life. He knew she struggled to figure out this life she woke up to, without her sister or father and with a baby and an apartment and scars she didn't remember. With a man she didn't remember - and never would have chosen.

 

In truth, he never would have chosen this woman, either, and he'd started feeling like he betrayed Scully every time he touched her.

 

"I didn't know."

 

"It's just bacon," he assured her.

 

"I didn't know," she'd repeated.

 

"It's okay," he said again. "It's just bacon, and I didn't need to be eating it anyway."

 

She went back to overseeing the French toast. Mulder stood there for a while, holding the baby and watching the back of her head. He couldn't fix it for her, he couldn't change it for her, and he couldn't convince her it didn't matter. He could pretend, but he couldn't convince himself it didn't matter, either.

 

What they had was lost in time, like tears in the rain. He'd blown his cover, and she'd known.

 

Mulder couldn't be the man she wanted, and he never should have tried.

 

Years later, on a frigid February night - in the same apartment and after they'd shared the same bed - she confessed. The problem, she'd said, hadn't been she couldn't live with Mulder, but she couldn't live with perpetually disappointing him.

 

Mulder should have eaten the burnt bacon.

 

Instead, he left.

 

****

 

Mulder decided to join a twelve-step program. Step number one involved not ending up hip-deep in his former partner.

 

First thing in the morning.

 

He sighed and curled up to Scully's warm body in the darkness. The motel blanket felt as scratchy as the bedspread, so he pushed it down and pulled the sheet higher.

 

This was insanity, but Mulder had been insane before. Compared to being dead or at a Wiggles concert, insanity was like a cakewalk.

 

He ran his hand up the slope of her hip, down the valley to her waist, and up and around her shoulders, pulling her close. Her eyes were closed, and her face looked flushed in the moonlight.

 

"We can't keep doing this, Dana," he told her quietly.

 

The old baby monitor crackled like rustling crinoline, and her hair felt silky against his bare chest. She was either asleep and she hadn't heard him, or she wasn't going to answer him. He bet the latter.

 

And she accused him of not communicating.

 

He exhaled and brought his hand up to her breast, drawing lazy circles with his fingertips across her chest. He passed his fingers down the side of her right breast, paused, and did it again, less lazily.

 

Mulder propped his head up on one hand, watching her as she slept. He slid his fingers down the outer edge of her breast again, where the roundness ended and the lymph nodes began. He felt something, like a little grape a half-inch beneath her skin.

 

"Scully," he said nervously. "Dana, wake up. What is this?"

 

"My right mammary gland," she mumbled.

 

"There's a lump, Scully."

 

"I know," she said, her eyes still closed. "It's okay."

 

He sat up, his stomach tight. "It's not okay. What do you mean you know? Have you seen a doctor?"

 

"It's benign."

 

"A benign tumor?"

 

"A benign cyst. I found it last month. I had a needle biopsy and an ultrasound, and it's fine. It should resolve on its own. It's highly unlikely surgery will be necessary."

 

"What kind of surgery?" He'd seen photos of women after mastectomies. He remembered her during chemo. She got rail thin and so pale her skin seemed transparent. He remembered dry toast and water making her vomit and the lightest touch to her skin hurting.

 

Damn it, Mulder should have known the chip in her neck had acted up. Otherwise she wouldn't be going to bed with him again after all these years.

 

"What kind of surgery?" he demanded in the darkness.

 

"It's highly unlikely," she explained, sounding annoyed. "But if the cyst doesn't resolve and it becomes uncomfortable, it can be removed surgically."

 

"The cyst can be removed or your breast can be removed?"

 

"The cyst, Mulder."

 

"They're sure?"

 

Before she could answer, Mulder heard William stir over the baby monitor. William rolled around for a few seconds, and it sounded like he got out of bed.

 

"Daddy?" a confused voice said over the static.

 

Mulder found his boxers and blue jeans beside the bed. He slid them on, and zipped up as he dashed for the door of Scully's motel room.  Behind him, she rooted around in the dark as well, looking for her clothes. By the time he reached the porch, William opened the door to Mulder's room, looking for him.

 

"I'm over here, buddy," Mulder whispered. "In Mommy's room."

 

William looked at him, bleary-eyed and partially awake.

 

"Do you need to go to the bathroom?"

 

"My stomach hurts."

 

"Where does it hurt?" Scully's voice asked from behind Mulder. "Come here, baby; let me see."

 

William went to her, pulling up his Yoda pajama top to show her his belly - or lack thereof. Their roly-poly baby and hulk of a toddler sprouted up a couple of years ago, steadily gaining inches, though not yet pounds. He had to work to push out what stomach he had, but he gave it his all.

 

Mulder followed William inside and closed her door behind him, sliding the deadbolt into place.

 

Dana forgot two things: first, their brilliant, imaginative son could lie convincingly, and second, being hurt or sick guaranteed Dr. Scully's attention.

 

She gave William the once-over, checking his forehead and throat while Mulder hovered. William rarely got sick, and Mulder could have handled this, but there was no use in arguing - or even in offering an opinion. Eventually, Dr. Scully rooted around in her suitcase and produced a bottle of children's Mylanta. Mulder offered a little plastic cup of water as a chaser.

 

"Does anything else hurt?" he asked.

 

William shook his head, his lower lip still pushed out unhappily.

 

"You wanna go back to sleep?"

 

The little boy nodded.

 

Dana tilted her head, wanting William in her bed, so Mulder steered him there. After he lay down, Dana pressed gently, low on his abdomen, asking if it hurt.

 

William said it didn't.

 

Mulder lay down beside him, still in his jeans, and put what he hoped was a warm hand on his son's stomach.

 

"Better?"

 

"Um-hum," William mumbled, probably as appeased by the attention as the treatment.

 

Dana lay down on the other side of William, glancing over him one more time as he started to fall back to sleep.

 

"It's all the candy you let him eat," she accused Mulder quietly, a few minutes later.

 

"Right - it's one miniature candy bar. If he has a stomachache at all, it couldn't possibly be due to breakfast at the airport, lunch on a three-hour flight, two hours in a car, or waking up and finding me not there," Mulder shot back in an unhappy whisper.

 

"Are you still letting him sleep with you? At home, I mean?"

 

"No," he snapped. "Not since last year, after you took him to the Bodies exhibit and he had nightmares for a week."

 

"Those nightmares couldn't possibly have been attributed to you and those Gunmen people letting him watch Star Wars. Darth Vader, Mulder? Really? For a five-year-old?"

 

"Plasticized partially-dissected bodies, Dana? Really? For a five-year-old?" he argued, imitating her condescending whisper. "I like how you think to check our son for appendicitis if he has a tummy ache, but you didn't think to mention it to me when you found that lump."

 

She looked at him like he was crazy. "Why would I tell you?"

 

"Because I was there when you had cancer. I loved you and I watched you almost die. You not remembering doesn't mean it didn't happen."

 

Dana pulled the covers over William and adjusted her pillow angrily. She'd put on the first thing she found: the oversized T-shirt she'd been wearing under his old FBI sweatshirt earlier. The T-shirt was ancient, with 'University of Oxford' across the front of it.

 

"Did you take half my wardrobe with you when you left?" he asked, still whispering and keeping his hand on William's belly. "Virginia isn't a joint property state; I know this from experience."

 

"Neither is Maryland."

 

"It's so comforting you thought to check," he shot back. This argument was stupid, he knew. He'd stop arguing if he could think of anything else to say to her.

 

The baby monitor still hissed. The heater beneath her window clicked on, exhaling an angry hot breath.

 

"I didn't leave, Mulder," she told him quietly.

 

You damn sure did, he accused her silently. You left both of us.

 

"Water under the bridge," he told her aloud. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "I think you should see your oncologist. Get checked out."

 

"I'll see my oncologist in January. Every January."

 

"Make a special appointment," he urged.

 

In the light from the parking lot, Mulder saw her eyebrows come together at an unhappy angle. "Raise your hand if you're a medical doctor and it's your breast."

 

Her hand went up before returning to rest on William's shoulder.

 

Putting the argument on pause, he requested, "Trade me sides; my hand's getting cold."

 

Like a Chinese fire drill, he got up and walked around to the other side of the bed. Dana maneuvered over William and curled up against the boy with her back to the window. Mulder found an extra blanket in the bottom dresser drawer and unfolded it over them before he lay down again.

 

"The lump is benign?" he asked, putting his right hand on William's stomach.

 

Her voice sounded kinder as she answered, "I promise you it's benign. A cyst is fluid, not a tumor. It's not cancer."

 

"Okay," he said.

 

William kicked the blanket off, rubbed his face with his fist, shifted, and relaxed and slept on between his parents.

 

"It shouldn't have to be so damn hard, Scully," Mulder said tiredly.

 

To his surprise, she answered, "No, it shouldn't," and he really couldn't think of anything to say to her.

 

****


	2. Chapter 2

7 Days in May

 

****

 

Day 2: The same thing we do every Tuesday: try to save the world.

 

****

 

Someone knocked in asymmetrical stereo, with one sound a muffled rapping from the motel room next door, and one an angry, slightly delayed pounding of knuckles against wood beside his ear. Mulder opened his eyes. The bathroom light was on. The clock on the other side of the bed read 5:26AM.

 

Scully pushed up on one elbow, her hair wild and matted in the back. Her make-up had formed dark smudges around her eyes, Bladerunner-esque. She looked like a woman satisfied by the night, but markedly displeased with the current hour.

 

William slept between them, radiating warmth but taking up an inordinate amount of space for such a little person.

 

"They've found another body," Mulder guessed as he rubbed the sleep - or lack thereof - from his eyes.

 

She flopped back down and pulled the covers over her bare legs. "I'm a medical doctor. It'll be just as dead at seven."

 

The pounding on the motel room next door resumed, accompanied by a man yelling, "Agent Mulder!" every five seconds.

 

Mulder still had on his jeans and T-shirt, and he found his fleece pullover shirt on the floor, beneath the bed spread. His socks and running shoes had been abducted during the night, so he remained barefooted as he jerked open Scully's motel room door.

 

Four FBI agents, two deputies, and Dr. Nemman stood on the next stoop.

 

Mulder stepped closer and partially closed the door, blocking their view of the bed. "What's this? A posse?"

 

"Do we have the wrong room? The clerk said you were in room 10."

 

"What do you need?" Mulder responded tightly.

 

"We found another body," a deputy told him, glancing past Mulder. "West of town."

 

Mulder nodded tiredly. He'd thought the Pacific Ocean constituted "west of town," but he wasn't quibbling. "Okay. Give me twenty minutes."

 

He closed the door again before they could object.

 

Dana sighed unhappily, crawled out of bed, and headed for the bathroom. She wore his old Oxford T-shirt and a pair of lacy black panties.

 

"Do you know what I did with my shoes?" he called, and heard the shower squeal on in response.

 

Through the window, Mulder saw the agents and deputies leaning on the hoods of their cars, twenty feet away. They drank coffee, and two smoked cigarettes, and all seemed to be planning to wait there for him.

 

Mulder had to go next door to get ready, but he preferred not to walk out of Scully's room without his shoes. He rooted around and decided he'd have to open an X-file on his Nikes.

 

He picked up William, who was sound asleep and as cooperative as an arm-load of assorted-length two-by-fours and carried him next door. Mulder was still shoeless, but at least a child constituted plausible deniability.

 

****

 

Violet barely tinged the black sky as they reached the line of patrol cars and unmarked fleet sedans along the edge of the road. Mulder slowed, looking for a place to park. William slept in the back seat. Dana rode shotgun, holding a cup of take-out coffee up to her mouth with both hands while staring blankly at the windshield. She blew across the top of the cup every so often, but he'd yet to see her sip it.

 

Mulder knew better than to talk to her or ask her to share the coffee with him until at least a quarter of the cup was gone.

 

He eased the Taurus off the pavement, shifted it into park, but left the ignition running to power the heater.

 

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he promised.

 

Without speaking, Dana huddled down in the passenger seat and continued performing what looked like a precursor to fellatio on her coffee cup. He moved to kiss her goodbye. She didn't move toward him, so he stopped.

 

"Okay," he said awkwardly, answering some unspoken question. "I tossed my carry-on bag in the trunk. If William wakes up, there are juice boxes, some trail mix. If things get desperate, dig deep and there's a Pirates of the Caribbean play set he doesn't know about yet. You have the bridge, Mr. Spock."

 

"Aye-aye, Captain," she mumbled, as he opened the door, but she added, "Mulder-"

 

He stopped, one foot on the ground.

 

She took a sip of coffee. "Be careful. You're wearing a red shirt. I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker."

 

He smiled at her, feeling less weary. "I've seen you work miracles. As my partner, you definitely worked a few miracles."

 

"Well, in case I didn't write down the miracle recipe, be careful," she answered.

 

She gestured for him to go on, so he did, closing the car door behind him.

 

He took a flashlight, but so many deputies and agents milled around in the fog he didn't need it. A constant stream of people walked beside the road, like dark ants hurrying to and from the nest. Someone put a cup of coffee in his hand and pointed him toward a path, past the gray rocks, and to the cold, windy, bleak shore of the ocean.

 

The FBI had the crime scene taped off and lit. A dozen people stood around, most muttering and staring at a nude body on the sand. The man's skin looked gray, but unmarked. He lay with his head toward the surf, his feet toward the bluff. A red Irish setter lay about ten feet from the body, watching the officers and looking concerned. The dog’s tail flicked against the sand as Mulder approached, and it raised its head.

 

"A local found him early this morning," a tall, swarthy FBI agent named Martelli told Mulder as he came up beside him. "Ralph Roy, 49, of Portland. A successful software developer, recently divorced. His brother said he was spending the week on the coast, hoping for a nice change of scenery."

 

Mulder looked out across the dark ocean.

 

"He rented a house a mile up the beach. My partner's checking it out. Agent Smithson. She's there now."

 

Mulder tried his coffee, and nodded, still looking at the beach as the sun began to rise. The wind off the ocean felt cold and salty, and stung his freshly-shaved jaw. The coroner's van waited to transport the body, and every law enforcement agent within a one-hundred-mile radius congregated on the beach.

 

"Did the body wash up on the beach, or is this where he died?" Mulder asked, his breath forming white clouds tumbling away on the breeze. "Or do we know, yet?"

 

"He's above high tide," Agent Martelli answered.

 

"But no marks? No footprints except his and the dog's?"

 

"None we can see. We haven't moved him, yet. Dr. Nemman wanted to, but we were waiting for Dr. Scully."

 

Mulder sipped and nodded again. He watched the Portland FBI agents for a few minutes and made a slow lap up and down the beach, looking things over. The Irish setter followed him, still wagging hopefully. It returned to sit near its owner's body.

 

"Is Dr. Scully on her way, sir?" Agent Martelli asked as Mulder returned. "She was one of my instructors at the academy. I was hoping to say hello."

 

"She'll be along."

 

"Yes, sir."

 

Mulder turned in a stationary circle, committing the area to his memory. The sun rose, burning away the fog. When he had to die - again - the stark beach, with the mountains in the background and the water eating away at the shore, wouldn't be a bad place to do it. It reminded him of the beach where he and Samantha used to play, and, in his old dreams, where he used to see Scully.

 

Mulder squatted down, and the dog came to him, lowering its head - shy, but friendly. It had gray on its muzzle.

 

"I've called the local vet," Agent Martelli told Mulder. "The brother's coming to get the dog, but I want a vet to check her over first, and we'll examine her for trace evidence. If she tried to protect Mr. Roy from his attacker, we might get DNA from her mouth or claws."

 

Mulder didn't see any marks on the dog but checking for trace evidence couldn't hurt. He looked at the corpse and at the dog again. "She can't be walking around the crime scene."

 

"I know, but she hadn't moved until you got here, sir," the young agent said, bending down as well. "Mr. Roy's brother said he'd had her fifteen years. Ginger. She's older than his children." He patted her head with his latex-gloved hand. "Come on, Ginger. Let's put you in a car so you'll be warm."

 

The dog tilted her head and offered her paw.

 

"He's not coming back, girl," Mulder told her. "It just looks like he is. Go with Agent Martelli. Go on," he advised, the same advice he'd given himself, over and over.

 

The young agent snapped his fingers and kissed, and the dog reluctantly followed him away from Mr. Roy's body. At the bluff, Martelli turned the dog over to an equally young female deputy. She fashioned a leash out of her belt and led the dog out of sight.

 

Agent Martelli returned and, uninvited, stood beside Mulder. The agent put his hands in his jacket pockets and briefly stared at the ocean as if posing for his portrait on a coin. While Mulder tried to think, Martelli cleared his throat. He cleared his throat again.

 

"What?" Mulder asked.

 

Martelli looked around, as if to make sure everyone else was out of earshot, and said sheepishly, "Agent Mulder, I wanted to ask- I'm driving from Jefferson Bay every morning. It was the closest motel room I could get."

 

A figure standing in the shadow of the bluff caught Mulder's eye, and for an instant he thought he saw Scully. The breeze blew her hair, and she watched him with a patient, vaguely curious expression.

 

"Agent Mulder," the young man's voice repeated in a Brooklyn accent, "I don't mean to get all up in your private business, but if you aren't using your motel room... It's a long drive from Jefferson Bay at three AM."

 

Mulder looked again, thinking Dana must want something, and surprised she'd leave William rather than calling Mulder from the car. The figure had vanished - lost in a sea of dark blue and black and green uniforms.

 

A flurry of activity and shouting came from on top of the bluff, and Mulder saw a dog's auburn head appear. She'd escaped the female deputy and come back to keep watch over the beach. She refused to budge despite a trio of people encouraging her and offering treats. She didn't growl or snap, but she didn't move from atop the bluff, either. Manhandling her risked hurting her or destroying any evidence on her. Mulder had no expertise in dog behavior, so he stayed on the shore and watched. After a few minutes, the consensus among the deputies appeared to be to let the old dog wait, and she'd move when they moved the body.

 

On the other side of the bluff, Mulder saw the tall antennas from the TV news vans going up, like ships' masts in the fog. Fox News and CNN had never met a grisly murder case they didn't like.

 

"As if God switched off their life," he heard Scully's voice say inside his head. As a rule of thumb, everyone died of something, even in the X-files.

 

Especially in the X-files. And his instinct told him dead-for-no-reason equaled an X-file.

 

"Agent Mulder," Agent Martelli tried a third time. "Your motel room-"

 

"I'll keep you posted," Mulder told the agent absently, and started back toward the car.

 

****

 

Dr. Nemman started down the narrow path as Mulder approached the road. Rather than move to one side the doctor stayed in the middle, blocking his way. He stood close to Mulder's height - heavier and about twenty years older - and had the expression of a man perpetually displeased with life.

 

"You leave my daughter alone, hot shot," Dr. Nemman greeted him angrily. Two FBI agents and a man in a coroner's jacket all turned their head curiously.

 

"Good morning," Mulder responded, and raised his coffee cup.

 

"You heard me," Dr. Nemman said.

 

"I heard you," Mulder agreed neutrally. He sidestepped the doctor and kept walking.

 

"Don't think you can come up here and do whatever you please. Teresa was a witness in your old investigations, and you report to someone at the FBI. Stay away from my daughter or you'll wish you had," the doctor threatened.

 

Mulder put his hand on his hip and, just for spite, let his profiler wheels turn, momentarily considering which would piss Dr. Nemman off more: feigning interest in Teresa or not.

 

"Your daughter is a grown woman," Mulder said, taking the high road.

 

Dr. Nemman snapped back, "She is fragile."

 

"Do you think it could be because you treat her like she's perpetually fourteen-years old?"

 

At the end of the line of cars, Dana spotted him and got out of the passenger side. William watched curiously from the backseat while he sucked a juice box dry.

 

Dr. Nemman looked at Dana, at William, and at Mulder's bare ring finger as he held his coffee cup. "I see your track record for doing right by a woman," the doctor said snidely. He repeated, "You stay away from my daughter, hot shot."

 

A female TV reporter stuck a microphone in Mulder's face.

 

He ignored her and kept walking.

 

****

 

The steering wheel made for an awkward desk, but Mulder liked to write his notes longhand, on a legal tablet, the same way he had in 1989. There was something comforting and permanent about pen against paper, like the staccato patter of typewriter keys sounded more productive than the plastic plink-plink of a computer keyboard.

 

"Is this important FBI business?" William asked from the back, out of his booster seat and leaning forward.

 

"It is, buddy," Mulder said absently. "This is what Mommy and I used to do. We were a team." He wrote down facts, a few theories, but mostly passed time. He couldn't think like a killer and entertain a six-year-old at the same time. "If I'm out of town, this is what I'm doing. Catching bad guys."

 

Never one to pass up a new vocabulary word, his son asked, "Criminals?"

 

"Criminals," Mulder confirmed. "Criminals are bad guys."

 

The road was too busy to let William out to run some energy off, so except for a trip to pee between the bluffs, he'd been cooped up in the Taurus for an hour. They looked at books and did schoolwork and had a snack, but Mulder wished Dana would hurry up.

 

"How do you catch criminals?" William wanted to know.

 

"We tell the other FBI agents who to look for, how to find them," Mulder answered carefully. "Mommy and I look at what the criminals have done, and we use that information to help find them and stop them from doing more bad things."

 

Mulder had seen the coroner's van leave with the body, and a man he took to be the local vet come for the dog. A few agents remained on the beach, but he didn't know what the hell had Dana occupied for so long. She didn't need to personally strain the sand; any of the six FBI Agents or four deputies on the case could collect evidence and take photographs. This was a field investigation, not Quantico.

 

"Is this important FBI business like you were doing with Scully last night?" William pursued.

 

Oh, any minute, Scully.

 

Mulder turned to look back at his son. "We were working on this case, William," he answered neutrally.

 

"Scully said you were doing important FBI business." William, proving his parents put the "I" in "FBI," observed, "With your clothes off. Why take off your clothes to catch criminals, Daddy?"

 

"Ask Mommy," he suggested. "She's a medical doctor."

 

"But you had your shirt-" William started.

 

Mulder handed the iPhone back to William. "Here. See if you can download some pirate games, buddy," he suggested.

 

****

 

Plenty of people in law enforcement still thought catching the bad guys had to involve heated interrogations, a stakeout, and a gun and a foot or car chase. Their entire career should be one long episode of Miami Vice. Those men had little use for behavioral science despite requesting the consultation. They treated Mulder and his profilers like cheap, poorly-placed smoke detectors: socially necessary, but likely more trouble than they were worth. If the case had the locals really stumped, though - or really spooked - the FBI profiler moved up a few rungs on the ladder of importance.

 

Mulder asked for more maps, and by the time he reached headquarters the Portland FBI agents and the Bellefleur deputies found him four: historic, topographic, "Your Scenic Drive up the Oregon Coast," and one marking the hiking and bike trails. The maps turned out to be unnecessary, though. With a sixth crime scene marked on the main map and the Post-it flags removed, Mulder saw the pattern easily. The bodies formed a ring around Bellefleur, with the most recent body nearby, at the coast to the west, and the farthest found deep in the woods to the east.

 

Their killer operated within a set radius. A time constraint or an area familiar to the killer? A newspaper or postal route? The distance on one tank of gas on a four-wheeler or a dirt bike? Mulder didn't see a boundary road or trail a killer might patrol, or any topographical barrier, but the perfect circle of crime scenes wasn't random.

 

He looked at the file on the Arizona murders. Four of the victim's bodies had exact locations; large circles marked the other three - estimates. Local citizens found those bodies - potentially victims one, five, and six - in the desert.

 

A brother discovered the first Arizona victim and buried him in the traditional Hopi manner; the brother made no police report for a week. Victim Two, the Navajo artist, got reported to the local authorities, who'd begun to investigate. Next, a Hopi woman's body was discovered, and the backpacker. Three dead bodies in the space of a week seemed unusual for a town of less than two thousand, and the FBI joined the investigation. Only then had the citizens of Oraibi Village mentioned the first victim's death. The reports indicated the interviewees were uniformly unhelpful in the way small towns could be. If outsiders asked, the locals got paranoid and clammed up, refusing to corroborate even basic facts.

 

Separate but equally panicked and unhelpful local men discovered Arizona victims five and six. The men loaded the bodies in the back of their pick-up trucks and rushed them to town, but claimed they couldn't recall exactly where in the desert they found the bodies.

 

As usual, a better initial investigation would have made Mulder's job easier. The FBI agents found seven bodies, few facts, and a wall of silence in the little village.  The deaths stopped, the case went nowhere, and eventually the FBI attributed the Oraibi murders to a combination of bad luck, exposure, and possibly some new street drug.

 

The first body turned up in Oregon. A second and a third body. Then the telephone rang in Mulder's hotel room at Disneyland.

 

Mulder found it unlikely Native American men who'd spent their lives in Oraibi Village didn't know every rock and bush in the desert around it. Also, a citizen willing to report a dead body wanted to be helpful; he didn't want his chop shop or drug lab or porn found as the FBI investigated his garage or back forty. He wanted justice - so long as no one knew pot plants grew in his basement and he still cashed his dead grandma's Social Security checks.

 

It took a few calls and some digging on the Internet, but Mulder found a home address for both of the men who had to guess at where they found the bodies in Arizona. If he picked the point in their estimated circle farthest from their homes and designated it the true crime scene, the seven bodies formed an evenly divided ring around Oraibi Village.

 

Mulder checked the photographs in the file and with a marker, drew the position of each victim on the Oregon map - six little stick people. The bodies were found prone, supine, and on their side, but in each case with their feet toward Bellefleur, and their heads pointed away. He drew a line connecting their heads and had a perfect circle.

 

On his map of Oraibi Village, Arizona, each victim's position was the same: feet toward the village, head away from it. Given the remoteness of the Native American village and the harshness of the desert, Mulder had wondered if there were a few undiscovered bodies - destroyed by scavengers or never stumbled upon or reported - but seven did seem to be the magic number.

 

Mulder glanced at William. His son sprawled on the old orange sofa across the room, playing on someone's laptop. Mulder got SAC Boyle's attention.

 

"Here," Mulder said. On the map, he pointed to the spot at the bottom right of the circle, in the forest outside Bellefleur. If someone wanted to divide a 360-degree circle with seven bodies, the last one should be there. "Send your search teams here."

 

As everyone else picked up their cell phones or headed for their cars, Mulder stayed behind, looking at the map. Something felt wrong. Not the circular killing pattern, but something. Like he'd finished the jigsaw puzzle to find he had an extra piece.

 

With his finger, he traced the highway out of Bellefleur and the forest road. He followed the trail leading into the forest and to the seventh unknown stick-man.

 

In May 2000, seven years ago, Mulder vanished from the same spot. Mulder and Teresa and Ray Hoese and Billy Miles and a dozen other people taken from their families and jobs and lives. One way or another, they all came back to their personal Hell.

 

Mulder bet, if he checked the old X-file, the other crime scenes were abduction sights, as well.

 

He didn't know what that meant, which bothered him even more. Mulder thought the abductions ended in 2001. He thought he'd ended them by destroying the Consortium's last hybrid lab. His chest tightened and his heart beat faster.

 

Outside, excited voices called back and forth. Car doors slammed and engines started as the deputies and agents headed out to search for the seventh victim.

 

Still rooted to the floor in front of the map, Mulder shifted his arm to feel the reassuring bulge of his holster. He'd left his ankle holster at the motel, a mistake he wouldn't make again. Though being armed made no difference. Bullets stopped humans, zombies, and some mutants. He had bullets, though. Bullets and a half-assed profile and seven bodies dead for no reason at old abduction sights. And a brilliant six-year-old son who rarely got sick. And a beautiful former partner with a chip in her neck, a lump in her breast, and a gap in her memories.

 

****

 

Breasts, boobs, bazongas, tits: whatever the term, Mulder qualified as a long-time fan. High beams, low beams, melons and bee-stings - God bless the ta-ta's, every one. He admired many casually - particularly during bikini or sweater season - and devoted himself seriously to a select few. He even supported boobies financially; he'd signed up for the Susan B. Komen race with Stephanie.

 

His ta-ta scorecard read 0 for 2 - or 1 for 4, depending on whether he counted sets or singles - this morning. Scully's right breast had lump that, despite her assurances, scared the hell out of him. Currently, as he tried to focus intently on the face in his webcam window, Agent Reyes nursed a child old enough to unbutton her mother's blouse and ask for a snack.

 

"I'm in the deputy sheriffs' office," Mulder told her. In other words, a public place. "I have William with me, and our motel has dial-up."

 

On the computer screen, Agent Reyes' image smiled and nodded.

 

On the East Coast, clocks read early morning. Working from home - which appeared to be Agent Doggett's living room - Agent Reyes wore pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt. She had her top up and a two-year-old girl attached to her breast.

 

William lounged on the old sofa in the corner again, alternating between working on his schoolwork, texting Langly, and bothering Mrs. Bahe. Most of the agents were in the field, but a smattering of men typed reports or talked on telephones.

 

"You're in Oregon, Agent Mulder," Agent Reyes said in her odd way, as if equally likely to be asking a question or making a statement. "You're looking well. Are you still running?"

 

"This week - only when pursued."

 

"Dana e-mailed me she and William went to Oregon with you," she answered. "I'm glad."

 

Since he wasn't privy to what Dana e-mailed Agent Reyes, or specifically what made Agent Reyes glad, Mulder answered, "She's finishing up at the morgue."

 

"How can John and I help?"

 

You could get a blanket, he did not say. He had no issue with breastfeeding - even a preschooler, even in public. His issue lay in ignoring 100,000 years of male instinct to look.

 

"I'd like your thoughts on this case. I'm sending you what we have: maps, photos, reports. Seven killings around Oraibi Village, Arizona, and at least six around Bellefleur. No clear cause of death. One woman and six men in Arizona, one woman and five men so far in Oregon. There's no obvious connection between the victims. The bodies are clearly arranged in a ritualized manner and, in Oregon, several were found at known UFO abduction sights."

 

"You think you have an X-file," Agent Reyes said.

 

"Yes," he answered tightly. That was why he asked for her help. He wouldn't contact her if he thought he had a hangnail. "The connection is to the location of the killings and the number of victims, not to the victims themselves."

 

"Who the victims are is unimportant; it's where the victims are."

 

He nodded curtly. She’d restated his last sentence like she’s made the observation.

 

"The Hopi Indians of Oraibi are thought to be the oldest community in the continental United States, Agent Mulder, yet one we know little about. The villagers don't allow photos. They have minimal contact with outsiders. They avoid modern technology. We don't even know exactly how many people live in the village."

 

"Have there been abductions in Oraibi in the last fifteen years?"

 

"We have no way of knowing," she answered. "I'll do some checking, though. I have a few connections."

 

On the computer screen, John Doggett approached, also in pajama bottoms. Doggett carried a coffee mug and a baby blanket. Agent Reyes took the mug, but told her partner she wasn't cold, thank you, though.

 

Doggett's image walked back to the kitchen shaking his head.

 

"Oraibi and Bellefleur are both old, Native American settlements," Agent Reyes said, returning her attention to the webcam and patting her daughter's back absently.

 

"I know. And I know the number seven has multiple significances, as does the circle. Beyond that, I need to do a little digging, and I don't have the time or the resources here."

 

"We're happy to help." She paused thoughtfully. "I know you have a theory, Agent Mulder."

 

Mulder shook his head. "Me? I'm a hired gun for the FBI."

 

A sofa spring squeaked, and he heard William get up and walk toward him. "Daddy, Scully's finished with the body," the boy said, reading the message on the phone as he ambled. "Dr. Nemman is still an asshole. That's a bad word. Scully's feeling homa sidal.  Homicidal. Meet her at the diner for lunch so she has an ali- an ally buy," William finished, still holding the phone as he sat on Mulder's lap. "Hello, Miss Reyes. Hello, Faith."

 

The little girl seemed preoccupied with breakfast, but Agent Reyes raised her hand, waving to the camera. "Hello, William."

 

"You have a very nice breast, Miss Reyes," the boy informed her, which should have made Mulder prouder than it did.

 

Monica Reyes smiled and said politely, "Thank you, Will."

 

Mulder got his phone back from William, told Agent Reyes he'd check with her later, and quickly shut off the web-cam.

 

"Alibi," he told William, as he got up from the computer. "We have to provide Mommy with lunch and an alibi."

 

****

 

As they walked around the corner and down the street to the diner, William bounced down the sidewalk like Tigger. After two successive nights in which sleep came secondary to sex - and the anxious insomnia inevitably following - Mulder understood why Mother Nature designed humans to procreate at twenty rather than at the wrong side of forty. The procreation part didn't change much but keeping up with those hyperactive little bundles of joy got harder as the years passed.

 

After learning he'd purchased $23.87 worth of new music and applications from iTunes this morning and could play Pong, two pirate games, and Alien Shooter on his phone, Mulder made a mental note to change his password. He checked the rest of his messages as he followed William. At 7:20 AM Eastern Standard Time, Stephanie texted "r u running late? lol," and sent another text ten minutes later: "where r u? worried. call me." She'd left voice mail messages, too: at 7:36, and at 7:48 AM.

 

The day had warmed up, and Dana waited for them on a bench outside the one restaurant in town lacking a drive-thru window. She wore clean green scrubs and a ponytail. She looked tired and frustrated and how she used to look as his partner.

 

"Hi," Mulder said. He slid the phone into his pocket, the voicemails still waiting and the text messages unreturned. He'd call Steph later - apologize, explain what happened.

 

William got a kiss, but - potentially because of the long table of deputies and FBI agents having lunch inside - Mulder got a tight smile.

 

"Do you have anything?"

 

"Nothing except sore feet and a giant headache," she answered wearily. "Their medical examiner wanted to argue with me about using the Rokitansky method and leaving the aortic arch intact. He calls me 'missy.' It's unwise to argue with me or call me 'missy' as I'm holding a scalpel."

 

Mulder nodded sympathetically. "He calls me 'hotshot,' and you should see what happens when Dr. Nemman thinks you're dating his daughter."

 

"Why in the world would he think you’re dating his daughter?"

 

"A series of unfortunate miscommunications."

 

He opened the door for them, and William scampered inside.

 

She paused, looked up, and informed him, "As the woman who carried your son, I hereby invoke my right to have you, the ISU Golden Boy, help me hide Dr. Nemman's murdered body and to testify under oath to my temporary insanity, if need be."

 

"Have you killed him? Allegedly?" Mulder asked, as he continued holding open the door for her.

 

"I thought I'd eat first, so I have sufficient energy to bludgeon."

 

"I'll buy you pie," he promised.

 

She sighed and walked under his arm, into the noisy little diner. The deputies and agents had saved seats for them at the table.

 

"We're on FBI time," she reminded him. "You are not buying me anything."

 

"Fine," Mulder conceded. "My ISU budget will buy you pie."

 

She turned, standing so close he could have kissed her. "I want apple pie a la mode, Golden Boy. Then, we park William safely in front of Discovery Kids and go bludgeon."

 

"I still love you," Mulder answered.

 

The noise from the diners and waitresses chatting, the old cash register working, and the plates clinking faded away.

 

She looked up at him with her lips parted in surprise.

 

He swallowed and added, "I do."

 

"Come on," their son's voice insisted, and William's hand tugged at Mulder’s. "Daddy, I'm humongously starved."

 

The din of the crowded diner returned, and William dragged both of them toward the table. The agents William met earlier greeted him with waves and hugs. Mulder and Dana took their seats, pulling an extra chair to the end of the long table for William.

 

Mulder went through the motions, both glad he'd said it and wishing he could take it back.

 

They focused on William to avoid looking at each other. Mulder unwrapped William's napkin from the flatware while Dana searched her bag for hand sanitizer. The little bell on the diner door jingled. Mulder saw her expression change and her lips move silently, forming a very bad word.

 

"There is no escape," she muttered.

 

He looked over his shoulder and saw Dr. Nemman coming in.

 

Luckily, the one space available was at the other end of the table, ten feet from them. Dr. Nemman got wedged in between two deputies, looking as unhappy about that as he did about everything else.

 

A waitress came over. She folded back her order pad to a fresh sheet, and started with Dr. Nemman's order.

 

"After dessert, you hold him, I'll hit him," Mulder promised quietly.

 

"I wanna hit him," Dana said irritably, as she gave William the hand sanitizer and picked up her own menu.

 

"Fine," he conceded.

 

"We don't solve problems with violence," William reminded them, reciting one of his school's prosocial bon mots.

 

Right. All we need is love, Mulder thought. Love, a way to fight the future, and a way to change the past.

 

****

 

Sometimes she did seem to have ice in her veins. Mulder didn't think he could kill a man in cold blood, but he knew, with the right provocation, Dana Scully could. In fact, Mulder had witnessed her shoot Donnie Pfaster and afterward, he'd lied for her under oath. Not that she remembered either.

 

As everyone finished lunch and trickled back to headquarters, a forest service SUV had pulled up in front of the diner. The forest ranger rolled down his window and, excited, announced to the FBI agents and half of Bellefleur a seventh body had been found where Mulder predicted. Which meant Scully was headed back to the morgue.

 

"No," she'd said coolly, leaving no room for debate. She had no intention of doing another autopsy with Dr. Nemman. On Dr. Nemman, but not with him.

 

Mulder thought a moment, drawing on those "effective leadership" seminars Skinner made him attend after the Folgers/Maxwell House Coffee Debacle in 2003, during which the schism in the ISU almost came to blows under Mulder's supervision.

 

The medical examiner was a pain in the butt, but historically a competent one - and Scully had dealt with him before. An FBI agent's job often involved stepping on local toes. Tread lightly but, if necessary, remind the locals they requested the FBI's expertise. As a pretty female forensic pathologist, she'd dealt with worse in some of the backwaters they traveled to over the years. The good old boys who thought they personified Sonny Crockett also thought "misogyny" was a good name for a stripper. Scully's techniques varied from "kill 'em with kindness" to "make their balls shrivel," but she handled it. One way or another, by the time he and Scully finished their investigation, she convinced the local thorn in her side she could manage a badge and a brain at the same time - which couldn't be said for those men.

 

Agent Scully handled it, Mulder realized. With years of experience as a female field agent - hired when the FBI was still largely a boys' club - she handled it without a second thought. If she needed Mulder in the morgue, she wanted either to show him something or to draft him as muscle to move a three-hundred and fifty pounder. His Scully was a self-rescuing model.

 

Dr. Dana Scully was an instructor at Quantico. She was used to being queen of the autopsy bay and having the full weight of the FBI's new Equal Employment policy behind her. She had no memory of ever doing field work, which explained her foot-dragging at the beach this morning.

 

Pulling rank, Mulder put Dr. Nemman in the SUV to go back to the crime scene with the forest ranger. Dr. Nemman could make his observations of the body there, and Dr. Scully would conduct the autopsy alone. Mulder got stuck dealing with a pissed off medical examiner but it was easier than burying a body for Dana and simpler than committing perjury again.

 

He wasn't treating her like a child, he assured himself.

 

"Last one," Mulder promised, as she rolled her neck tiredly. "You'll have the morgue all to yourself, I promise."

 

"You're certain? Seven victims?" Dana asked him.

 

He nodded.

 

"How are you certain?"

 

"Eight, nine, and ten divide evenly into 360, but seven doesn't. It’s another thing that makes seven happy."

 

Everyone else headed to their cars or back to the sheriff's headquarters. William swung from a lamppost, Gene Kelly-style, watching for Redcoats and pirates.

 

"What if you're wrong?"

 

"When am I ever wrong, G-woman?" he countered, but added, "About dead people?"

 

She nodded noncommittally. "What about Will? I can't do an autopsy with him there. He'll insist on helping."

 

"If you'll take him for a few hours, I'll follow the M.E.'s van back to town, and we'll swap: a child for a corpse."

 

"I think you're getting the better end of the deal," she told him.

 

"I think you're right," Mulder agreed. "His spelling and math work are supposed to be done, but I haven't checked them."

 

To him, everything was settled, but she lingered. So he lingered with her as the crowd dispersed.

 

"This crime scene, Mulder - it's the clearing in the forest where you disappeared in May 2000," she said. "I asked Monica to e-mail me Deputy Director Skinner's old report. Seven years ago... It's exactly the same coordinates."

 

"They don't want me," he assured her, though he wasn't certain. "Besides, let's hear your spiel on the scientific impossibility of alien visitation and how the abduction experience is a psychological defense mechanism. I like you lecturing me on psychology. I won't even get out the old slides of my body after my six-month 'defense mechanism.'"

 

"Why is it the same location, Mulder?"

 

"I'm working on that."

 

Her hand slid into his. "You had nightmares last night."

 

"You had two orgasms," he deflected. "It’s not a fair trade."

 

"Go back to the station. You don't have to go into the forest." 

 

"You believe there's nothing paranormal in the forest. Decades of mysterious disappearances, and victims dead for no reason," he said, "and it’s all perfectly scientifically explicable. Why shouldn't I go into the forest?"

 

"You're here to do a profile. You write profiles from photographs and crime reports all the time. There's nothing you're going to see at the crime scene you don't know. What are you doing?"

 

"You had no reason to come to Oregon with me. William's missing school. You're missing teaching your classes. The body from this morning - I could have it in your autopsy bay at Quantico," he reminded her. "I'm doing my job. I'm catching the bad guys, saving the world. What are you doing here?"

 

She didn't answer.

 

"I will see you later," he promised. "I will. You worry about yourself and the chub scout."

 

Agent Martelli's fleet sedan pulled up, with a place for Mulder in the back seat. As Mulder got in, and as Scully and William walked away, he heard William inform her, "You were holding Mulder's hand, Mommy. I saw you. Is Mulder your boyfriend?"

 

Mulder grinned, exhaled, put his seatbelt on, and signaled for Agent Martelli to drive.

 

****

 

Agent Martelli's partner reminded Mulder of Halle Berry, though of more exotic ethnic ancestry. He'd heard a deputy address her as "Agent Smithson," but Agent Martelli called her "Chelle,'' if he thought no one else listened.

 

Mulder occupied himself during the long drive to the crime scene by observing the two of them, trying to decide the status of their romantic relationship. It could be under development, ongoing, or a thing of the past. The FBI frowned on senior agents fraternizing with junior agents or supervisors sleeping with secretaries, but federal employees of the same pay grade fell in and out of love as often as the rest of the world. Despite his regret at children saddled with the last name 'Martelli-Smithson,' Mulder found himself thinking these two kids would make pretty babies.

 

He watched the tall trees blur past outside the car for a while. His mind wandered to Scully's smile, to William's little toes, and to the Red Sox - any nice thought to fill his head.

 

The time on his wristwatch matched the digital display on the car's dashboard. Mulder checked his watch casually at first, but more frequently as the trees grew denser and the oncoming traffic sparser. If he covered his wristwatch with his other hand and breathed quietly, Mulder both felt and heard the soft ticking. It comforted him. He'd picked up the trick from one of the abductee message boards a few years ago. It was silly, and the kind of thing he didn't tell the Bureau shrink. Still, as long as the ticking continued and his watch matched the clock, he felt somewhat safe. If They came for him, his time would fall out of joint. He couldn't stop Them from taking him, but at least he'd know if They came.

 

Mulder took his wristwatch off and held it. He watched and felt the seconds fall into minutes in synch with the fleet sedan's dashboard and the rest of the universe.

 

"Agent Mulder," a woman's voice said. He looked up, expecting Scully.

 

Agent Smithson had turned sideways in the passenger seat and looked back at him with her big, dark eyes.

 

"May I ask you a personal question?"

 

"Chelle-" her partner started, but she shushed him.

 

"Between the media and all of us, every motel room is full for sixty miles around," she said. "If yours becomes available, would you please let me know?"

 

Mulder leaned forward. "Where are you staying?"

 

She confessed, "On the pull-out sofa in Agent Martelli's room in Jefferson Bay. I know I'm not supposed to be there, but the motel had one room and I lost the coin toss. The choices were the sofa, the car, or bunk with The Italian Stallion, here. Let me tell you, Allen Martelli snores like a congested bull."

 

"You have bottles and tubes and makeup everywhere," Agent Martelli asserted. "For such a beautiful woman, it takes you a long time and a lot of shit to get ready in the morning."

 

"Oh, which of us has three different bottles of Axe body wash in the shower?"

 

"It's shower gel. My mother buys it for me, and it gets rid of eau de corpse," Martelli argued. "I asked Agent Mulder about his room. I got first dibs."

 

Not a new relationship, Mulder decided. Smithson and Martelli bickered like an old married couple. They had a history. A love story that didn’t end happily.

 

"Martelli, you have a room," Mulder answered. "Agent Smithson is homeless. She's sleeping on your sofa. You aren't being chivalrous."

 

"She can have my room," Martelli promised. He slowed the sedan, watching for a turnoff onto an unpaved forest road. "Chivalry is dead; I read it in Esquire. It's been replaced by the Wonderbra and the double standard."

 

"How’s that working out for you?" Mulder asked, and sat back without answering the original question.

 

He looked out the car window again, at the bright green trees in the afternoon sun. Everything felt familiar to him. It was the one-way road less traveled by that had made all the difference.

 

Despite the watch in his hand, he felt his heart beating faster, a Pavlovian response. As many times as he assured himself the forest held only a dead body, it wasn't quite true. His theory still had more loose ends than a prison shower, but Mulder knew one thing: whatever caused the deaths - and for whatever purpose - the perpetrator was higher on the food chain than homo sapiens.

 

As they got closer, the fear faded to background noise and a new sensation began. He felt a gentle tug at his mind, calling to him like a siren. He recognized the feeling. He and three other fathers took William's Indian Guides troop to Shenandoah National Park last month. The outing involved a muddy day of refereeing fights and kissing scrapes and putting out flaming marshmallow torches more than it involved exposing the boys to nature. On the drive home, while William and his friend slept in the back seat, Mulder felt the same visceral pull as he approached Skyland Mountain. The higher he climbed on the quiet road, the stronger the pull became until he stopped the vehicle and got out, away from the boys.

 

The Grand Cherokee's big engine hadn't stalled. His watch hadn't stopped. Nothing appeared in the cold sky. No spacecraft, no lights, no bounty hunters or shape-shifters or other abductees. Just Mulder standing alone beside the road in the dark, holding his Sig Sauer and looking up at the stars as if a pistol would help in a fight against the entire universe.

 

If he had spray paint, he would have marked the spot on Skyland Mountain. It had to be what drew abductees over the years. An intersection between one universe and the next, like Stonehenge and Nazca. Like the Chacoan roads of the southwestern desert and the Mystic Pizza Hut of Kansas. As an abductee, Mulder felt it, too.

 

Recognizing the sensation didn't make it any less terrifying.

 

The fleet sedan stopped, so Mulder put his watch on and followed Agents Smithson and Martelli down the path through the woods. They continued to bicker about something, but he'd stopped listening.

 

He and Skinner followed the same trail in 2000. A half-mile later, Mulder arrived at the same clearing, roped off with police tape. The pull didn't change. It didn't grow stronger, but it didn't weaken, either. He didn't feel the same powerlessness he had when the ship took him, but he felt a hint of it.

 

The hint brought the metallic, peppery taste of adrenalin to his mouth.

 

Breathe, he told himself. Think. Do your job. It's a forest. Not all forests contained paranormal monsters or menacing aliens or slow, certain death. Just most of them.

 

The SAC chucked Mulder on the shoulder, saying he earned the "Spooky" nickname for knowing where the body would be found. Mulder flinched at the touch.

 

At the crime scene, the deputies and forest rangers and agents performed a time-honored law enforcement tradition: stand around and stare at the body and mutter. Only the photographers, the CSI team, and Dr. Nemman did anything.

 

This time, the victim was tall and slim. A deputy said he worked as a surveyor for a local logging operation. The nude body lay on his side as if sleeping. If Mulder calculated correctly, the man's feet pointed toward Bellefleur.

 

Mulder looked at the victim's peaceful face, and for a millisecond he saw his own features, slack and blue-gray with death. Rows of wounds marked his cheeks and a jagged hole bisected his wrist. The vision stopped. The corpse transformed back into a blond-haired man with a big tribal tattoo on his shoulder and a pale line where he'd worn a wedding band.

 

Mulder turned around, walking quickly and blindly down the path back to the cars. He wanted to get back to William, and he wanted to get back to Scully, and he wanted to put some space between him and the clearing. She was right; seeing the body didn't tell him anything he didn't know.

 

They'd get on a plane tonight, and he'd write the profile from Quantico. The killings were ritualized and paranormal. And over, for the year. He'd figure out the rest of the details from home.

 

The edges of his vision shimmered and distorted. He felt the magnetic pull of the clearing behind him.

 

Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe They were coming for him again. Or for Scully. Or for William. Maybe the extra puzzle piece had nothing to do with a paranormal serial killer and everything to do with a smoke screen for more abductions.

 

Mulder walked away faster and started to jog. Behind him, above him, all around him, as much as he tried not to, he imagined the vast, silent presence of the spaceship. He checked his watch, but he had no other clock to compare it to. The watch hadn't stopped, but there was too much time between ticks.

 

The trees grew denser, shadowy. He looked up, trying to see the UFO. The sun's rays shone down through the branches, reaching out their long fingers for him.

 

Mulder stopped, looking around him. He'd stumbled off the path and didn't see any trail leading back to it.

 

Stay calm, he reminded himself as his heart beat double-time inside his chest. He wasn't lost in the wilderness; in fact, he couldn't be far from the forest road. He couldn't see or hear them, but a dozen people must be within fifty yards of him. He was having a panic attack; breathe and it would pass.

 

Nothing would take him. Nothing would pin him down and cut into his body and take what wasn't theirs. The pull he felt came from the place in the forest, not a spaceship hovering above it.

 

Breathe, he kept repeating as his lungs constricted and every instinct told him to run.

 

"It's okay," Scully's voice called. He saw her at the top of the ridge. She wore dark pants and a windbreaker with a light blue blouse beneath it. She had her hair pulled back, but her face was rounder. She looked like the Scully who accompanied him on his first trip to Bellefleur years ago. "It's okay, Mulder. Over here."

 

He saw her: his Scully, waiting in a pleat in space-time. His world narrowed to one long green path with her at the end of it. He'd find her, save her, and they could start over again.

 

"This way," she said, gesturing for him to come to her.

 

He did, dodging low branches, his shoes slip-sliding on the hillside and making it difficult to get any traction. He fell, caught himself on a rock outcropping, and scrambled up again. He reached the top and stopped to get his bearings, but she was gone.

 

And he'd known she would be.

 

Mulder bent over, his hands braced on his legs, trembling. He felt as if someone had sucker-punched him. He'd courted this torment: going to Oregon again, going to bed with her again, acting like they were the people they used to be. And he did it for nothing. In six years, she'd never had one hint of a recovered memory. She wasn't his Scully.

 

But Goddamn it, she looked like her. She smelled like her and moved like her and thought like her and laughed like her. And he still loved her.

 

"And I love you," Scully's voice said from beside him.

 

He felt a hand on his arm, a gentle, comforting touch he'd know anywhere. Her touch flowed over him, warm foam against his skin and company for his lonely soul.

 

"Don't," he told her hoarsely. "You aren't real."

 

The hand left him, and footsteps moved away through the brush. "Using our old slide projector and basic super-string theory, I could easily prove I am," her voice said. "Come on, Mulder; let's get you back to the car."

 

He opened his eyes, feeling better, straightened up, blinking at the sunlight. Mulder stood at the edge of a narrow dirt road bisecting the forest. He saw two FBI fleet sedans and a patrol car parked in the curve a hundred yards away.

 

"Agent Mulder, are you trying to get back to the car?" a female deputy asked with her hands in the pockets of her green jacket. "Easy to get turned around out here, isn't it?"

 

He looked at her stupidly. She'd led the dog from the beach this morning. The Native American deputy was a young, plain-looking woman, but competent at her job. He didn't know her name, but he knew she wasn't Scully.

 

He glanced behind him. He stood on a path – but not the one he'd followed into the forest.

 

"If you're with the first bunch of agents who arrived, you're ahead," the deputy told him, pointing toward the cars. "If you just got here, you're parked farther up, at the trail head. The car's there, but you can't see it from here."

 

Across the road, among the tall trees, for an instant he saw Scully watching him. His Scully. Standing, watching, waiting for him, like she had in a hundred dreams. She vanished again, and he saw only the forest.

 

He felt her presence. It was a beacon in the darkness, a place to stand while he moved the world.

 

He wasn't hallucinating or deluding himself or whatever rational medical argument Scully would make. She was there; he'd stake his life on it.

 

"Agent Mulder, are you all right?" the female deputy asked.

 

He nodded and turned toward the sedans.

 

The first news crew arrived, and a group of people watched as the coroner loaded the body into a black van. Separate from everyone else, Smithson and Martelli leaned against their car. Agent Martelli held a lit cigarette.

 

"Chelle, when you said 'personal' I thought you were going to ask him about Dr. Scully and get both of us suspended," Martelli's deep voice said as Mulder approached behind them. "I knew she had a son; I didn't know it was by him."

 

"'By him?' No one says 'by him' anymore. Did they defrost you from the 1980's?" she answered sarcastically, and added, "She has a son 'with him.' Didn't you know Agent Mulder and Dr. Scully used to be partners on the X-files?"

 

"Really?" Agent Martelli took a drag from his cigarette and passed it to her. "That paranormal, UFO crap? I thought she'd always been the hot instructor at Quantico and he ran the ISU." He paused. "Why two motel rooms? The kid's too little to stay by himself. Maybe an on-again, off-again thing?"

 

Mulder saw the cigarette pass between them once more. "The way I heard it, they are no longer a thing. She got pregnant and he left," Smithson answered. "End of their time on the X-files. Deputy Director Skinner was involved in the mix, somehow."

 

Mulder stopped, standing a car-length behind them, unnoticed.

 

"It looked like a thing to me this morning. Agent Mulder came back," Martelli asserted, and took his turn on the cigarette. "He's not some deadbeat. You can't blame a guy for reacting badly to news like that, at first."

 

"Sure, I can," she said tightly.

 

"Are we going to fight about this again? Do all roads lead back to you? If you'd wanted to have it, you could have had it. Everything would have been fine. I told you."

 

"I couldn't be pregnant at the academy," Smithson shot back. "I don't see why I should have to give up my career, my dream, to have your baby."

 

"Which you did not," he snapped. "You never even bothered to stop smoking. I drove you there, I paid, I waited, and I drove you home. Happiest day of my life, Michelle, let me tell you."

 

"Give me the goddamn cigarette, Allen," she demanded.

 

"Hello," Mulder said.

 

The two young agents whirled around, their mouths open and their body language shouting 'caught.'

 

Mulder felt oddly calm, certain, like a ship's captain sure of his course. The pressure inside his head lingered, but it didn't frighten him like it had earlier.

 

"Hi," said Martelli, recovering faster. "Hello, Agent Mulder. We didn't hear you come up behind us. How long have you been standing there? We, we-"

 

"We're the social outcasts' club," Smithson said, showing him her cigarette. Her voice sounded calm, but her hand shook. "Indulging our addiction makes us the FBI's most unwanted."

 

"Oh, you two can't even fathom being the 'FBI's most unwanted,'" Mulder responded idly. He noticed his left palm stung. He looked down to see an ugly gash in it, probably not bleeding because of all the dirt and crud packed into it.

 

"We wondered where you'd gone," Agent Smithson said. She shifted her feet and managed a pretty smile Mulder read as thirty degrees off from genuine. "We saw you leave the crime scene, but you weren't at the road."

 

"I took the long way back," Mulder answered, and examined his hand again. His loafers were muddy, and he had a grass stain on the cuff of his last clean dress shirt. He saw a big splotch of blood on the leg of his pants, where he rested his palm earlier.

 

"At the academy, we developed the half-cigarette rule," Smithson told him. "We each smoke half, so we'll only end up with half-lung cancer. Agent Mulder, we were just talking. I don't know what you heard, but we didn't mean any-"

 

"I know," Mulder said, interrupting her awkward apology. "But when you talk, leave out the part about Deputy Director Skinner. He was AD Skinner and he was our friend. He still is our friend."

  
"Yes sir," they answered in unison.

 

“I came back,” Mulder told them.

 

"Yes sir," they repeated.

 

"If you two are waiting on me, you can head back to town. I'll ride in the ME's van. I'm going to the morgue, anyway. Go check out our newest victim's life. Ask his wife and co-workers if he ever talked about any of that UFO paranormal crap." Mulder thought a moment. "Ask about Mr. Roy's old dog. Make sure he had one."

 

"Mr. Roy's telephone number was on the dog's tag," Martelli responded. "Ginger was his dog."

 

"Good observation," Mulder said in a tone at the crossroads of encouraging and condescending. "Call his brother or ex-wife and see if Ginger was currently Mr. Roy's dog. Or if Ginger died recently. If the brother and ex don't know, check with Portland vets."

 

"You want us to call every vet in Portland and ask if Mr. Roy had a dog that died?" Martelli asked in disbelief. "The same dog we led off the beach this morning - alive - with Mr. Roy's phone number engraved on her collar?"

 

"Or you could stand around and discuss Dr. Scully's personal life, the Deputy Director of the FBI, and my son's paternity," Mulder said brightly.

 

The smarter of the two, Smithson stubbed out her cigarette. "We'll get right on it."

 

Martelli nodded quickly in agreement.

 

Agent Martelli opened the passenger side door for Smithson, and she seemed surprised.

 

As Martelli walked around to the other side of the car, Mulder told him, "You may find all roads do lead back to her. If they do, take the hint. And stop letting your mother buy your toiletries."

 

Agent Martelli nodded earnestly.

 

****

 

"Whoa," Mulder told the eager morgue attendants as they started to unload the body from the van. He'd rather not explain a body bag on a stretcher to William. "Give me a minute, fellas."

 

Dana had things under control. One of the morgue's double doors opened. She emerged, still in her scrubs and wearing latex gloves.

 

Mulder stood beside the van, looking at her. She was in full pathologist mode, ready to collect evidence and correlate facts. She was sixty-two inches of reason primed to get to the bottom of things with a Stryker saw and a medical degree.

 

The year might have changed, but she remained the scientist and he remained the believer. She was the horizon to his sky.

 

"I was trying to watch for you while I worked on my notes," she said apologetically. She opened the other door at the top of the ramp and locked it in place. "The lack of windows and the presence of a six-year-old created impediments, though. He won't stay in the office; he wants to play hide-and-seek. I have a full house in there. Do you know how many inappropriate hiding places there are for a child in a full morgue?"

 

The late afternoon sun made her hair glisten, and Mulder felt a flutter again, like little warm butterfly wings inside his abdomen. Scully would have some rational explanation for it: pair bonding and limbic memories and oxytocin and vasopressin.

 

He had a different word for it.

 

"How was your trip to the forest?"

 

I came back, he wanted to tell her. This time, I came back.

 

"Mulder?"

 

"Hi," he said.

 

"Hi," she echoed brusquely, and looked at the wad of napkins he held against his palm. "What happened to your hand?"

 

"I fell."

 

"I looked through your medical records recently. You have a rather adversarial relationship with gravity, Agent Mulder."

 

The butterflies in his belly fluttered harder. If a storm hit Brazil in two weeks, he could be held responsible.

 

"What I said earlier," Mulder said. "It still holds."

 

"Will! Come on. Daddy's here," she called into the morgue. She reminded Mulder, "Earlier, you said you'd buy me apple pie."

 

"They don't have apple pie at the diner today. Would you settle for a consolation prize? Less than the brass ring?"

 

She raised her eyebrows hopefully. "Pumpkin pie?"

 

Before he could respond, William bounded out wearing blue latex gloves and a face shield.

 

The boy informed him, "I was in Davy Jones' locker."

 

"I'm afraid to ask," Mulder said, and leaned against the side of the medical examiner's black van. The attendants looked impatient. He let them wait. "But I am glad you used universal precautions."

 

"I saw a brain," William reported happily.

 

"Was it real? Was it human?" he asked.

 

"Allegedly," William said. "Scully wouldn't let me touch it."

 

The edges of her mouth turned up - a smile only detectable by a trained observer.

 

"He is our son," Mulder reminded her.

 

****

 

At the sheriff's headquarters, Mrs. Bahe had five telephone messages from Diane - his secretary at the ISU - which Mulder stuffed into his pocket to join the receipt from lunch and a good rock William found.

 

Mulder had e-mail messages from his profilers checking in, and the usual FBI bureaucratic bullshit. He read the reports and answered questions from his men - and women, he had two female profilers - but the FBI memos got printed out and crammed in his briefcase to be reviewed sometime between later and never. If it was important and push came to shove, either Diane would take care of it or Skinner knew where Mulder lived.

 

The FBI got as much benefit from sending Mulder to those "effective leadership" seminars as it did from sending him to the teamwork and communication seminars, years ago.

 

Mulder kept finding himself standing in front of the map on the wall, looking at the ring he drew and the seven little stick people. Seven didn't divide evenly into a three hundred and sixty degree circle. He'd seen ritualized body arrangement many times: a trio of crucifixions, a pair of lovers, even deaths arranged to recreate an entire Sunday school class, once. If the human mind could dream it up, it could twist it into something evil ending up on his desk.

 

Take seven random people, no known abductees. Switch off their life at - for the sake of argument - old UFO abduction sites, and have their bodies form a circle. Over seven days. Every May.

 

Seven bodies in seven days for seven years ended with May 2012.

 

That couldn't be a good thing.

 

Why, though? That was the toehold Mulder couldn't get. If a psychic vampire fed off the victims' life force, why the circle? Why the pattern? What did it signify to the creature creating it?

 

"Is he sleeping?" William's voice asked, sounding uncertain.

 

William studied the crime scene photo in his father's hand. Mulder held a photograph of the second Oregon victim, the body a few hours dead. The picture belonged in the file; no photos of bodies decorated the wall in the sheriffs' headquarters. The agents taped up maps and lists, but not the victims' images. 

 

Mulder picked up his son and set William on his hip. The boy understood Mommy and Daddy helped catch the bad guys and keep everyone safe; the details - those could wait a few more years.

 

If the date - May 2012 - the end of the Mayan calendar - was significant, William would be eleven. Almost eleven and a half.

 

"He's sleeping," Mulder assured him.

 

Whether William thought he was Paul Revere or Jack Sparrow or Luke Skywalker or The Tribble Whisperer, Mulder wanted his son to be fearless. Mulder had stayed with the FBI to ensure that fearlessness, and he stayed up late on the nights Dana had William, checking the same abductee message boards Teresa Hoese read. He came across an occasional crackpot or blurry photograph but, for years, no abduction reports he gave credence to.

 

He intended to see it stayed that way.

 

He wanted to check the Arizona bodies had indeed stayed dead. Mulder wanted to search for other cities with multiple unexplained deaths or missing persons in the spring. There might be clusters where some bodies remained undiscovered, or corpses found after too long to determine a cause or exact date or location of death. He needed to spend some time in a library and, frankly, he needed to thumb through his old X-files.

 

William had drained the iPhone of its life-force, so, one-handed, Mulder typed an e-mail to Agent Reyes on the deputy's computer.  'Read psychic vampire file,' he typed, and hit send.

 

Langly once told Mulder callously he couldn't save the world while wearing a Snugli, which hadn't proved true. Running out of clean socks and boxers hindered the world-saving, though.

 

He'd fought solo a long time - long enough to learn having an ally helped. He didn't mind having a partner who was a crack shot, good with facts and figures and head wounds, and who could say "I would like to post Agent Mulder's bail" in four languages. And if she smelled like William's shampoo and rain and amber, it earned mad bonus points.

 

"Let's get out of here and go do something nice for Mommy," Mulder suggested to his son.

 

****

 

A little boy could amuse himself quite well with a playground, a flashlight, and a stick. William battled pirates, dragons, Sith lords, Redcoats, and whatever he thought hid in a tree beside the slide. Mulder just had to sit and supervise, which, being a federal employee, he was adept at.

 

William's bedtime passed without even a wave.

 

Night arrived at the motel long before Dana. She parked her rental car in front of her room, got out, and stretched tiredly.

 

William came running from the jungle gym, down the sidewalk, and, brandishing his stick, challenged her to a duel.

 

She raised her hands. "I surrender," Mulder heard her say, as he got up and followed William.

 

"We take no prisoners." William pointed his stick at a concrete bar at the end of an empty parking space. "Give us treasure or walk the plank."

 

She stepped up onto the low cement bar, feigning fear. Despite his weariness, Mulder smiled as he watched them play. Being Dana Scully, the bookshelves at her apartment held every parenting book on Amazon.com, and she over-achieved at motherhood like she did at everything else - with a heavy dose of hippy-dippy he felt was Agent Reyes' influence. Beyond the organic oatmeal, though, and carefully chosen educational toys and - God help their son - kid yoga classes, she liked William. She sparkled with him, and Mulder loved her for loving a child she'd only woken up to.

 

"I can't swim," she protested. "There are sharks in these waters. You wouldn't execute an unarmed FBI doctor, would you?" She eased her way down the "plank" and closer to their son. "What kind of mean pirate are you, Captain Will Scully?"

 

William lowered his stick, uncertain. Before he knew it, she'd disarmed him expertly. As the stick hit the pavement, her arms went around him and she blew raspberries into his neck. William laughed and squirmed until she kissed his cheek and let him go. He made for the safe haven of the motel office's porch.

 

"This means war," he yelled at her, spotlighting her with Mulder's flashlight. "To arms! Prepare the cannons!"

 

"I am the Dread Pirate Mommy," Dana called back. "Prepare for your bedtime."

 

There was giggling from the shrubs.

 

"I surrender, FBI woman," Mulder told her, ambling over. He leaned down and kissed her. "Prepare to be boarded."

 

"You look like I feel," she informed him. "How's your hand?"

 

"It hurts. I don't think it needs stitches, though. It's not bleeding anymore."

 

"Did you have someone look at it?"

 

"I'm hoping to do that now," he said.

 

She unlocked her motel room door and switched on the light. "Did you do my laundry?" she asked. He saw her look at the stack of folded clothes on the dresser. "Will's laundry?"

 

"I found a Laundromat and a dry cleaner," he answered. "I did everyone's laundry."

 

"How did you get into my room?"

 

"I held up my badge and said 'I'm the Dread Pirate Mulder. Let me in the FBI doctor-woman's room so I can get her panties.'"

 

"Thank you. And thank God you only use your powers for the good of mankind."

 

"And to obtain panties."

 

William, realizing he waged a one-sided pirate war, came bouncing over. She told him to bounce right on into the bathroom and brush his teeth.

 

"Anything?" Mulder asked, sinking into a chair with a groan.

 

She sniffed uncertainly and looked around her room. "What is that smell? It's not bad, it's just... What is it?"

 

"I don't smell anything," he lied. "Tell me about our seventh victim, the late Mr. Weaver."

 

"Mr. Weaver had a small, undiagnosed aortic aneurysm. He smoked and drank far more than he told his wife and his doctor he did. He died about six hours before his body was discovered, and he'd eaten a steak and bean burrito last night. Otherwise, I'm still-"

 

"Waiting on lab results," he finished for her.

 

"You rush a miracle worker, you get rotten miracles." She took off her tennis shoes. "I swear it smells like my grandmother's kitchen in here. What did you come up with?"

 

"The seven bodies are arranged as spokes of a circle or a medicine wheel. Native American medicine wheels are traditionally imperfect, allowing a gateway to enter them. Since a circle can't be divided equally by seven, it remains imperfect. Both cities once had large Native American settlements. Circles are considered protective, mystical. They might be markers or signals."

 

"So ritualistic murders. Did you contact-"

 

"I've talked with Agent Reyes," he told her.

 

Dana wiggled her toes, got up, found a pair of pajamas for William and for her, and disappeared around the corner to the bathroom. A moment later, Mulder heard the shower running and her voice talking with their son. She returned having taken off her makeup, put on cotton pajamas, and left her feet bare.

 

"He's not washing," Mulder told her. "He's in there splashing around and singing and pouring shampoo down the drain."

 

"I don't care. It's the motel's shampoo, and if you want him washed, you can go wash him."

 

"I'd planned to wait until he collapsed and put him to bed dirty," Mulder admitted. "Do you remember having Agent Martelli in class at Quantico?"

 

"I do. He and Agent Smithson were in the same class. Martelli needed to study more and chase women less."

 

"He thinks you're hot."

 

"I rest my case," she said, coming over to him. "Let's see your war wound."

 

She moved the floor lamp closer, and he held his palm up for her. He'd washed it off and wrapped it up, but her expression indicated he hadn't done a good job.

 

"How did you do this?"

 

"I fell and tried to catch myself. I thought I saw something in the forest this afternoon, and I was chasing after it. Gravity kicked in. My old nemesis."

 

She searched her suitcase, coming up with gauze and tape, and got her instrument kit from her purse. She'd brought her instrument kit to Disneyland. Mulder couldn't get a full-size tube of toothpaste through airport security, but she could probably carry-on bone shears and a suture kit.

 

"What did you see in the woods?" she asked, taking his hand.

 

He shrugged. "You know me. It's not what I saw; it's what I thought I saw."

 

"You were okay today? Going back to the forest?"

 

"Define 'okay,'" he challenged tiredly. "I have to slip the Bureau shrink a Benjamin every so often so I can stay on the FBI payroll. Like 'happy,' 'okay' is a tentative state."

 

She asked irritably, "You're not going to answer me, are you?"

 

"Are you gonna look at my hand or what?"

 

She sighed and tilted his palm toward the light. "You have debris deep in the wound, and it's infected. I'll clean it up and apply some Bacitracin, but I want to look at it again in the morning." She moved his hand to the lamp again.

 

He tried to hold steady, but either he wasn't or she still couldn't see because she suggested, "Sit on the bed and put your hand on the night stand," she suggested.

 

"As you wish," he said, getting up wearily and doing as instructed.

 

The shower squeaked off. William emerged in his underwear, having forgotten both to dry himself off and to put on his pajamas. William got a kiss from Scully, and snuggled, damp, under the covers on the other side of Mulder. William watched his mother, seeming eager, and Mulder knew the boy had remembered their "good secret."

 

Dana turned her head to see what their son looked at.

 

"Mulder..." she said slowly, curiously, as she noticed the white bakery box on her nightstand, "did you and Will get me a present?"

 

"Where did that come from?" Mulder said, feigning puzzlement.

 

"Mulder bought it," William announced, unburdening himself. "It's a good secret, not a bad secret."

 

She opened the top of the box. "I thought the diner had lemon pie today. Where did you get a pumpkin pie?"

 

"I held up my badge and said 'I'm the Dread Pirate Mulder. Give me a pumpkin pie. And panties.'"

 

Scully appraised the pie appreciatively, and closed the top again. Mulder laid his injured hand on the nightstand, beside the flimsy cardboard box. He toyed with William's wet curls and avoided looking at his palm because it made him queasy.

 

"You kissed my mommy," William said knowingly. "I saw you."

 

"I may have, buddy," Mulder mumbled.

 

Usually they read at bedtime: endless repetitions of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" and "Treasure Island" as of late, until he could do it from memory. Or Star Wars. Or Jules Verne. The books were in Mulder's motel room, so unless someone fetched them telekinetically, tonight's bedtime would be story-less.

 

The heater beneath the window switched on and off as she worked on his hand. William's eyes drooped lower and lower. Mulder heard the laugh track of the television show on in the motel room next to Scully's.

 

She poked something that smarted. Mulder jumped.

 

"Sorry," she said.

 

"Don't hurt my daddy," William requested sleepily.

 

"I'm trying not to, baby. Mommy's tired and better with patients who don't feel pain," she muttered to herself.

 

"It's okay," Mulder assured her. Leaning his head back against the wall, he closed his eyes. William felt warm and heavy against him. Mulder let himself rest, not asleep but not awake, either. He drifted peacefully, thankfully between the two.

 

He opened his eyes. A gauze bandage covered his palm and the cut hurt less. Dana locked her motel room door.

 

"What happened, Mister Prepare to be Boarded?" she teased him quietly.

 

"Rain check," he mumbled. He kicked off his shoes and slid lower in the bed, still in his jeans and a red fleece pullover, both Downy fresh. "I beg of you, don't make me move."

 

He didn't want to be alone. He'd spent most nights of his life alone, but he didn't want this one to be one of them. He wanted to put his arms around Scully's body and have her steady him.

 

The lamp on the nightstand clicked off, and the bed shifted as she climbed in on the other side. Mulder rolled onto his side and adjusted his pillow. She and William were under the covers. He lay on top of them, but Mulder lacked the energy to remedy that.

 

"Did you two have a good day?" she asked.

 

"We worked on the case, washed clothes, played in the park, and requisitioned a pie. And he got to see Agent Reyes' breast."

 

"How was that?"

 

"Very nice," he answered. "But one of us told her so."

 

"He didn't."

 

"He did," Mulder assured her.

 

She laughed, making the bed jiggle. She pointed an accusing finger at him. "Those are your genetics coming out, not mine."

 

"It's having a Y chromosome," he told her. "So yeah, I guess those are my genetics."

 

In the moonlight, the gold glistened in her hair, as it did in William's.

 

"Let's have another one," he said softly, on impulse.

 

She stopped stroking William's shoulder. "Do you mean have another child?"

 

"Yeah." He'd never considered the possibility before, but once he said it- "Yes," he repeated. "Let's have another baby."

 

She raised her head, looking at him. "Mulder, I, I, I can't. There are no ova."

 

"We could use donor ova. They can even put your DNA into a donor egg. I read about it on the Internet."

 

"First, I'm not sure that's legal, and second, using donor ova costs a fortune. I'm forty-three years old. You're crazy."

 

"I'm not worried about the cost," he countered. "There's a pregnant woman at my gym who must be fifty. If the lump in your breast is nothing... You're healthy, I'm healthy. Why couldn't we?"

 

"We aren't married."

 

"We weren't married when we tried in vitro. We weren't married when we had William. We aren't married now. We are good together, and I, I, I think having another baby would be nice. Having a baby both of us-"

 

"Both of us wanted," she finished for him.

 

"Both of us planned," he corrected. "All I'm saying is if you want another baby - with me - let's do it before it's too late."

 

She paused. "We're not talking about my biological clock, are we?"

 

"Not entirely, no."

 

She shifted, curling up to William. "I don't know, Mulder. Let me think about it."

 

He closed his eyes, letting the subject drop.

 

She had no issue with going to bed with him. She hadn't left skid marks when he told her he still loved her. If she'd been the one asking the question - did he want to have another child with her - he wouldn't have needed time to think about it, though.

 

****


	3. Chapter 3

7 Days in May

 

****

 

Day 3:  Everything is wrong with your universe. Do not attempt to adjust the picture.

 

****

 

In Mulder’s dream, he stood at his bedroom window, watching the night sky.

 

He recognized his old apartment, and his old life. Early Y2K was the last time he'd left Penthouse and Playboy beside his bed. By the spring, Scully’s frequent presence prompted him to put the porn away, change the towels and sheets, and place the toilet paper roll on the dispenser. His apartment went unoccupied for a long stretch due to his death, and again after William's birth while Mulder stayed with Scully. Mulder and William lived there briefly in spring 2001 but moved back to Scully's apartment upon her return. From there, after a couple of years, he'd moved to the house.

 

Mulder spent from May 2000 to August 2002 paying rent to store his books, fish, and sofa, but if porn lay out in the open, it was winter, 2000.

 

He glanced away from the dark window and saw the woman in his bed, and he knew the exact date. March 23, 2000. Some days cloned themselves and repeat forever - coffee, shower, commute, monsters, mutants, conspiracies, commute, sleep - but a few nights happened once in a lifetime. That night was one of them.

 

"Mulder? Are you okay?" came Scully's voice from behind him.

 

He couldn't think of anything better, so he'd said, "I thought you were sleeping."

 

He heard the mattress move as she shifted. "I was."

 

Her clothes lay on the floor, but he'd put his shorts on earlier. Mulder glanced down, realizing the absurdity of his modesty. Scully was a medical doctor who'd seen him undressed on multiple occasions, and besides, if he had any secrets before, he didn't now.

 

They were adults, he'd told himself. They'd even had sex before, though the encounter in January had been... It was horrible. His memory of the night remained nightmarishly surreal. Stark and hellish and appropriate for the day his mother took her own life. He'd been as inconsiderate of a woman as possible without breaking any laws, and he still wished Scully had rubbed his back to make him feel better. After - there'd been as much 'before' as it took to unzip - she got up from his living room floor, got dressed, told him he didn't need to apologize, and never mentioned it again.

 

He'd wanted to apologize, though. Over and over and over. He wanted to crawl under the rug and hide until the Gunmen created a new identity for him in a third-world country. Mulder remembered her politely making him hot tea and giving him pills she found in his medicine cabinet, as if he'd thrown up in her car rather than ejaculated inside her body. As he started to fall asleep, she sat beside him on his bed, holding his hand like he was a child. He'd wanted to be closer, but he asked permission before he touched her again. She came to him. Mulder put his arms around her, even a leg over hers so he surrounded her and she centered him. "Sorry," he remembered whispering to her, as the sedatives began to take hold. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

 

She'd told him to sleep.

 

A thousand things in his life, he'd like to take back. Their first time, the night after his mother's suicide, was one. Mulder had desperately hoped this night - or the day following - wouldn't be another.

 

His bedroom TV had still been on, repeating the NordicTrack infomercial ad infinitum. He remembered noticing the air had cooled, roughening and raising the hair on his arms and chest. He felt the damp late-winter cold pressing through the window. His bedroom smelled of old books and dress shirts fresh from the cleaners and of her.

 

"Are you okay?" he asked. He crawled back onto his bed and lay down beside her. "That was..." He hunted for the right word. Colliding like two storms, she'd left marks on him and likely vice versa. That didn't worry him, though. He meant 'okay' in the 'being in bed with me' sense. "That was passionate," he said.

 

"Everything about you is passionate, Mulder. There is no half-way. Not with your work, not with your life. Love isn't any different."

 

"Are we using the L-word?" He kissed her lips tentatively. "Love?"

 

"Love is a biochemical response in the lower brain to produce bonding, to create familial units, to carry on the species." She lectured, a tell-tale sign she wasn't okay at all. "We're genetically programmed to secrete endorphins in situations where social bonding decreases anxiety and increases our sense of safety."

 

"Is that what we're doing?" he asked. "Creating a familial unit?"

 

"No," she answered softly, sounding sad.

 

"I'm sorry," he said quickly. He kissed the ridgeline of her shoulder. "You know... You know how much I wanted a baby for you. What I meanis, come tomorrow morning, do you want me to make a place in the medicine cabinet for your toothbrush? Assign you a coffee mug? Put you on my Blockbuster card? Renew my membership with MUFON and NICAP at the family rate? Or is it just tonight?"

 

Her fingers moved through his hair and slid down his neck and chest. "Tonight isn't over."

 

"Scully, technically I'm the senior agent on the X-files. If I walk into the Hoover Building and announce I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Walter Skinner may say 'congratulations,' shed a few private tears, and assign one of us somewhere besides a basement office. If Skinner doesn't separate us, someone above him will. I'm giving them the perfect excuse. All our work, all we've worked for, it goes away."

 

"You're being paranoid."

 

"I'm Fox Mulder; of course I'm being paranoid. Baby, I want you to be sure you want to be with me." He swallowed and added, "Because I want to be with you."

 

In response, she seduced him, and damn it - they must teach it in medical school - she did it well. He'd never mastered turning down a smart, beautiful woman offering him the opportunity to self-destruct, and that went double for Scully. As she touched him, his lower brain secreted methamphetamine, and reason rapidly went by the wayside.

 

"Scully," he repeated hoarsely. She hadn't said she was okay and she hadn't said she loved him. She didn't do anything casually, let alone go to bed with him. "Don't."

 

Her mouth left his. She moved back to a polite post-coital distance, but her hand lingered on his chest.

 

She looked up at him with blue eyes he could fall into, the same way he could let himself fall into her again. And again. Until reality caught up with them and the heavens came crashing down.

 

"You want two shelves in the medicine cabinet?" he offered. For such a beautiful woman, she required a lot of fancy bottles and tubes and soaps in the bathroom.

 

She didn't answer.

 

His alarm clock read 4:43 AM. The night neared its natural end.

 

He saw her glance past him, at her crumpled skirt and sweater on the floor near the doorway. She could be dressed in two minutes, home in thirty. They could add this night to the list of things they didn't talk about.

 

"Don't," he repeated. "Stay tonight. Like we're normal people. Two normal people who don't have the whole universe against us."

 

She traced an invisible circle on his left pectoral muscle with her finger. "The universe is ever-expanding and quite possibly infinite in volume. Scientifically, the whole universe can't possibly be against us."

 

"That's comforting," he told her. "Of all the life-forms among five billion trillion stars, something out there is bound to be rooting for us."

 

She sighed as she rolled over - indicating he'd muddied space-time theory with romantic idealism - but stayed in his bed, indicating she'd let him slide this once.

 

He kissed the side of her neck twice, and her earlobe, punctuating a paragraph of promises he didn't have words for. It would be okay: them, tonight, tomorrow morning. The world didn't end because they'd kissed, and the planet would continue to turn if they were lovers. Or something. Some status regularly involving two wine glasses at dinner and two coffee mugs at breakfast.

 

She looked ethereally lovely: pale skin, glistening hair, and the outline of her against the darkness of his bedroom window, with the light from the television playing over her. "You look like the moon goddess," he whispered to her. He pulled her to him and curled up behind her, the way normal lovers did. "What are you doing down here, toying with the mortals?"

 

"Diana and Phoebe were moon goddesses," she informed him, but he didn't hear malice in her words. "Dana was an Irish goddess. A warrior goddess with legendary sexual prowess."

 

"I stand corrected."

 

"You stand at attention," she observed.

 

He shifted his hips back. "Sorry."

 

She laughed softly and moved so he pressed against her again, causing another warm flood of sensation in his groin. He kissed her cheek, her earlobe again, and her neck, making a trail with his lips. He put his hand on her waist, pulling her close, and felt her inhale as his erection pressed hard against her bare bottom. Her hair tickled his throat. She put her hand over his, interlocking their fingers.

 

"Tell me what happens next," he whispered to her. "After tonight. Not the next twenty years - just tomorrow morning, so I can make sure to have clean coffee mugs."

 

She didn't respond. He opened his eyes and saw her watching the window. The sky above Alexandria was vast and black, sprinkled with stars. Mulder saw Orion to the south, clear and bright in the darkness.

 

"I don't know," she answered, and he sensed she told the truth.

 

"Okay," he said softly. "That's okay."

 

"There's Sirius," she said, raising her arm and pointing to a star watching them. "The brightest star in the sky. Twenty-three times brighter than the sun. Sirius was Orion's hunting dog, and the Egyptians used it to predict the Nile flooding." She moved her hand as she showed him, "Sirius, Betelgeuse, and Canis Minor. The winter triangle."

 

She'd shown him those stars before. He knew it, and he knew she knew it.

 

No one spoke for a moment.

 

"I don't know what comes next," she repeated, and she hadn't been talking about the sky.

 

"You asked if I love you, and you know I do," he told her. "Body and soul, till death us do part. Passionately, recklessly. But if you don't love me- Or if you don't love me like I love you... I'm not going to forget, but I won't mention tonight again. If the choice is between having something less with you and having nothing, I’ll take less. Less than-" He hunted for words again. “Less than the brass ring.”

 

“You don’t deserve less.”

 

“One of us was the ISU’s Golden Boy,” Mulder remembered reminding her. “I know you, Scully, and I love you to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. ‘Less’ isn’t the right word,” he amended. “If I subtract tonight’s turn of events, what I have with you isn’t ‘less.’ What I have with you steadies my world, gives me life. Give me a tall ship, and you're the star I steer by. I guess the question isn’t whether I can live with less – because I can. I do. I have for a long time. The question is: do you want more? And do you want more with me?”

 

Seconds passed. As she didn’t speak, Mulder’s heart beat too loudly inside his chest.

 

“Scully, you don’t have to decide right-”

 

"Of course, I love you," she whispered back.

 

He'd put his hand over hers again and, with his mouth, retraced the salty path down her shoulder.

 

"Then love me," he dared her, and she had.

 

The March air felt cool, but she was warm, and places inside her were warmer still. He'd relaxed, believing her. The second time, on the cusp of the new millennium, he'd let Scully love him.

 

All the doctor's appointments and modern fertility science failed, but between midnight and dawn, she got her miracle. They created William. The old-fashioned way: when a man loved a woman. Scully discovered her pregnancy in a timely manner. For Mulder, his abduction and subsequent death delayed the news until his son's birth.

 

The next morning he'd woken up alone, and the pillows had smelled of her.

 

****

 

In retrospect, the question he should have asked that night was "Do you want to love me?"

 

Any doctor knew emotion didn't equal volition and love didn't equal intent. She'd follow him into Hell, ready to rescue him from demons with a first aid kit and a pistol, but she wouldn't let herself love him. She viewed watching his back as obligatory but loving him as reckless. Being his partner could get her killed but loving him could get her hurt.

 

In fact, in his darker moments, Mulder thought loving him had gotten Dana Scully little except hurt.

 

In the end, she loved him out of obligation, and he was selfish enough and lonely enough to let her. Again and again and again, like eventually he'd find something to rhyme with orange – but nothing rhymed with orange.

 

"Mulder," the same voice said from the motel bed behind him. "Are you okay?"

 

He stood at the window of her motel room, still dressed, looking out at the rain drumming against the black parking lot. The wet playground swings swayed in the darkness as if occupied by children's ghosts, and a lone pair of headlights traveled down the main road through Bellefleur. If she'd asked what he watched for, he couldn't have told her because he didn't know.

 

Something. He sensed something watching back from the shadows.

 

He heard her get up, cover William, and come to him. Her hand touched his hip in the casually intimate gesture of an old lover. "Did you have another nightmare?" she asked.

 

"I lied to you," he told her, still watching the wet night. "MUFON doesn't have family membership rates, and there's no fee to join NICAP. They give you the coffee mug if you buy books and videos."

 

"Move on?"

 

"MUFON."

 

"Mulder, I don't know what you're talking about."

 

"I know," he said quietly. "It was a long time ago, but I still wanted to tell you."

 

"Okay." Her hand moved over his back, rubbing, as if trying to comfort him. "A long time ago - why did you lie to me?"

 

"Because I loved you more than you loved me. Or at least, in a different way than you loved me," he confessed. "Because I was afraid. You didn't get your baby and you didn't get your white picket fence, and I didn't think... I didn't think what I could give you was enough. Not in the long run. Turned out, I was right."

 

"Being in Bellefleur again must bring back memories of you and I as partners. Before you were abducted."

 

Dana's bedside manner best suited the dead, but he nodded anyway. "The last time we were here, we didn't know yet, but you were pregnant. If I had come back sooner, if I'd known where I fit in to your life... I hate that you needed me and I wasn't there. Even after I came back, I still wasn't there."

 

"I'm a grown woman, Mulder. You've always been there when we needed you," she assured him.

 

He shook his head. "No, I wasn't. You wanted me to be happy about the baby - or at least happy for you - but I wasn't. I thought the consortium or the chip caused your pregnancy, or the doctors tampered with the baby." He paused. "I thought I'd lose you to the baby. I couldn't feel anything, let alone happy. I wanted it all to go away. I wanted to be you and me again: solving cases, arguing, making up, making love. Mulder and Scully. Except I was dead and you were putting up Pooh wallpaper in your nursery."

 

She listened without comment, which surprised him. Dana seldom let him tell her things not documented by files or photographs. If she couldn't corroborate his story, he didn't get to tell it.

 

"I thought, when you gave birth, I got there too late or he was some freak-show genetic nightmare," he said, barely whispering. "Either way, he was dead. I wouldn't hold him, I wouldn't look at him. Ask Agent Reyes. It isn't in her report, but she'll tell you. I felt so scared for you, angry for you. You wanted this baby so much and how dare They fuck with you and your dreams and your body again. How dare They. If They'd left you alone, left me alone, we would have been fine. I remember holding you in the helicopter on the way to the hospital and thinking 'At least it's over.'"

 

"You cast yourself in the worst possible light. I've read those reports. You should have been on medical leave and psychotropic medication, not working for the FBI. Not trying to take care of us." Her hand moved beneath the fabric of his shirt, still caressing his back. "How could I not have realized?"

 

"You did realize," he told her. "I thought I had you fooled, though. I bought a Volvo, learned how to change a diaper. I even got myself fired from the FBI. No more X-files. No more Agent Mulder. If I was dead inside, it didn't matter who the hell I was on the outside, so why not be the man you needed? You wanted? I tried, Scully, but you knew me. Fortunately. Unfortunately. Whatever. You be the judge."

 

"Do you think I don't know you?"

 

"I think-" he started, turning to face her. "I don't know," he said honestly.

 

"What is it that you want me to know? You're brilliant and imperfect? Relentless? You've spent decades inside the minds of monsters, and it shows? You believe in the paranormal and justice with the same white-hot passion you have for the people you love? You have strange friends and stranger ideas and you keep rancid goats in the lunchroom refrigerator at the ISU? Six years, Mulder. Most marriages don't last that long. Two years of living together and a child by you - what is it you think I don't know?"

 

"You can't ever fathom how much I love you," he managed, summing it up. She could explain the neuro-chemical equation for love - she could even quantify it and put it on a slide - but she could never fully comprehend the improbable journey leading to it. Long before she and William had been a 'we,' there had been a 'she' - his partner, his ally, his friend - and that's who he loved. "You love me because I'm your son's father. You love me out of obligation. Fascination, maybe. Sometimes for nocturnal recreation," he said, smirking half-heartedly. "But I love you because, somewhere along the line, it stopped being a choice."

 

"Incorrect, Agent Mulder," she whispered.

 

"How is it incorrect? You inherited a life you never envisioned without any of the memories or emotions to go with it."

 

"I've inherited cars without instruction manuals," she countered.

 

"This isn't your father's Oldsmobile. The woman a couple years ago who admitted to loving her husband more than her children? Reverse the sexes and it would have been me. If you hadn't been abducted... At first, I loved William as part of you. If it's possible to love someone for someone else's sake, I did. You and I had eight years together, and society expected me to love the baby more because he looked like me?"

 

"You feel guilty you loved me more than you loved our child? A child who - except for disdaining the USDA food pyramid guidelines and any scientific research on parenting - you are wonderful with? Fox Mulder, your neurotic is bottomless."

 

"It is," he agreed.

 

Her warm hand settled on the small of his back, toying with the waist of his jeans and the boxer shorts beneath them. "You think, because I don't remember Duane Barry or Robert Modell or Donnie Pfaster, I can't possibly know you or care about you? For the ISU's Golden Boy, you're remarkably myopic."

 

He nodded, unsure of the reason for her accusation but willing to concede she was right.

 

She assured him in a low, lover's voice, "I know you, Mulder."

 

He turned to face her, his hands resting on her waist. "Which begs the second question..." he whispered back.

 

She had to tiptoe to kiss him, and she did. She put her arms around his neck and pulled him close. Everyday worries - from the paranormal serial killer to the next morning to the end of the world - fell away.

 

"Say it," he requested. She said it a few months ago - or something like it - and he wanted to hear it again. He wanted some assurance all the pain, all the fear, all the nightmares, had some purpose. He came back for love of her when staying dead was easier. "I love you. Scully, I..."

 

"You know I do," she whispered, balm to all the things wrong in his world.

 

Those endorphins kicked in. Like any junkie falling off the wagon, if he fell, he fell hard. He stopped watching the rainy darkness, stopped thinking about the case and the shadows. He stopped thinking at all. A summer storm of soft skin and feminine scents and silky hair surrounded him. Passion rolled in, beautiful and dangerous and intoxicating.

 

William slept in the bed, which left the bathroom, Mulder's motel room, and the cars. In their haste, the vanity in the bathroom won out, with the door locked, her leg around his hip, and his sore hand braced against the mirror. In the hot, hushed melee of things, Mulder whispered he loved her. And he wanted to marry her. To have another baby. A child was impossible tonight, he knew, but it had been impossible that March night seven years ago, too.

 

****

 

Since he didn't know his ring tone this week, Mulder scrambled out of bed in his boxers and T-shirt, found the rest of his clothes, and started patting down his pockets in the darkness.

 

The phone continued ringing.

 

As a highly-trained investigator and the ISU's Golden Boy, he ruled out the motel telephone by knocking it off the dresser and onto his bare foot.

 

Without opening her eyes, Dana retrieved her cell phone from the nightstand. She silenced the ringing, put it to her ear, and mumbled an unhappy, "Hello."

 

She listened, and sat up, pushing her hair back from her face. "This is William Scully's mother."

 

The bedside clock said before six AM, and William slept beside her.

 

Mulder sat down on the edge of the bed. He rubbed his eyes. His hands smelled of her.

 

The palm of his left hand throbbed and smarted.

 

"Will's not at school because he's out of town with me," Dana told the caller, sounding irritated. "Who is this again? How did you get this number?"

 

William's teacher had faxed and e-mailed his assignments, so Miss Janet had his work for today. They'd anticipated William would miss some school with the trip to Disneyland, so he had all his little books and workbooks with him.

 

Mulder gave her a "what's happening" gesture.

 

"His father is out of town on a case. He's doing a profile in Oregon. No, there's nothing wrong. I don't know why he's not answering his phone." Scully listened another moment, and said tightly, "I'm sure he meant to call you back. Sometimes, Mulder gets caught up in the moment. He's fine. In fact, he's right here."

 

She held the cell phone out to him and said coolly, "It's Stephanie Something. Apparently, you stood her up yesterday and you haven't called her back or answered her text messages. You didn't take William to school this morning, so she found my number on the PTA list and wanted to check you haven't met with some horrible fate."

 

He held up his good hand for the phone, glad Stephanie had likely hung up, mortified.

 

"Steph?" he said, but the line was dead.

 

Scully stalked to the bathroom. She had the door closed by the time Mulder caught up with her.

 

"She's my running partner," he told the door. "I forgot to call her."

 

He heard the toilet flush and the shower curtain rustle angrily.

 

Mulder started to explain further, but stopped, his face hot. Scully had done this with Phoebe and again with Diana; she'd acted like a jealous schoolgirl while simultaneously disavowing any romantic interest in him. Until four days ago, she insisted he "deserved someone who loved him for who he was" - and said it wasn't her. He was a free agent, and he shouldn't apologize if he hadn't done anything wrong.

 

He hadn't slept with Stephanie, but what if he had? What if he'd been screwing all of Alexandria for the last three years instead of home, alone, watching porn and the Sci-Fi channel? He didn't have a fresh tattoo.

 

When Dana Scully got a tattoo - or joined the FBI or did anything she viewed as rebellious - she proved her independence. Proved it to her father. To Daniel Waterston. To Mulder. To all the men she viewed as father-like authority figures. She established she wasn't the good little girl who followed all the rules. She could be bad. She chose to be bad with a man who, in the end, punished her rebellion physically or mentally in some way.

 

Including Mulder.

 

He wished he wasn't a profiler, and he didn't think so damn much, sometimes.

 

"My hand hurts," he said, addressing the doorknob. He told her because she'd wanted to look at the cut in the morning. On the East Coast, it was morning. He pulled the gauze bandage back, checked, and told her, "I think it's infected."

 

"Then you should see a doctor," her voice said angrily, and the shower faucet squealed on.

 

He found his cell phone in his coat pocket, dead as a doornail.

 

The charger he had plugged into the car, so Mulder sat in the parking lot and stared resentfully at her motel room door. As soon as the iPhone had juice, it informed him Steph had left him three anxious messages and Agent Reyes called twice. Mulder's secretary would like a few minutes of his time, and William's app and music expenditures begun to cut into his inheritance.

 

Scully was the one being unreasonable, he assured himself as the rain beat down on the car's metal roof. She could have politely taken a message; she acted like a child by handing him the phone. Mulder felt he should get more leeway for having a pretty running partner concerned for his well-being.

 

William broadcast news better than Paul Revere. His son probably went home from school last week and informed Dana "Mulder kissed Miss Stephanie in the parking lot," triggering Dana's abrupt decision to resume having Mulder warm her bed. Or, until Mulder was available, to have some other man visit and commemorate the occasion with another fucking tattoo.

 

Seven years ago, Daniel Waterston's reappearance precipitated William's conception, and there'd been something about her wanting a desk before that.

 

Mulder knew he'd reached the point where reason fell victim to anxiety and a bruised ego, but he couldn’t do anything about it except pout and lick his wounds.

 

He gave some thought to being adult and trying to see things her way, but decided not to bother. It was Wednesday. She had William. It was Mulder's turn to save the world.

 

Mulder put his elbow on the driver's-side door and started to rest his head against his hand until he remembered it hurt.

 

He didn't think he could single-handedly save the world.

 

His skin smelled of her, and he still didn't see a light on in her motel room. She was still in the shower. If he'd go back inside - apologize, explain - she wouldn't even know he'd ever left.

 

He'd let the phone charge more, he decided.

 

The light beside her bed did come on at six-thirty, but Mulder decided he'd head to the sheriff's headquarters first - get a jump on his day.

 

He'd see her later, and they'd talk then.

 

****

 

Mulder spent the morning at a doctor's office having dirt and splinters dug out of his palm, and he waited at the pharmacy to get antibiotics, which made his stomach hurt. He bought condoms which, one way or another, he planned to use in the near future.

 

Alone, if he had to.

 

To show he still knew how they worked.

 

Mulder's phone was completely charged and completely silent.

 

He didn't know whether he wanted to talk to her or not, so he'd called the next inexplicable woman he could think of.

 

"Six men, one woman," Agent Reyes' voice said over the iPhone's speaker. "They could represent the seven traditional Babylonian gods. The ancient Babylonians used a base-sixty number system: sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour. Three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle and days in a year. That's all Babylonian."

 

Mulder rested his arm on the desk in the sheriffs' headquarters and his chin miserably on his arm. The numbing medicine the doctor shot into his palm had worn off, and it throbbed again. The rest of his problems were somatic - a plethora of reasons to call Scully.

 

The deputies thought assigning him a desk might help him with his profile. No, assigning him a clue might help his profile.

 

"Why recreate it, though?" he asked the phone. "If this is some ancient psychic-vampire, why create a pattern to make an obsessive-compulsive vampire crazy? You can't divide a circle evenly by seven. Could it be a trap? A way to contain a vampire rather than something created by one?"

 

"The seventh glyph in the Mayan system corresponds with creation," she told him, which was interesting. "It's also the last glyph on their calendar. 2012."

 

"Another early settlement," he commented. "Another civilization with legends of abductions, and a culture which has largely disappeared or been absorbed in modern times. Scully went over the mathematical and scientific implications of the number seven, but she missed the Mayan glyph."

 

He heard five seconds of silence. "I've been noticing something, Agent Mulder." She paused again. "In working on this case with you, talking with you, I've noticed something."

 

"What?"

 

"You're saying 'Scully.' You said William was with 'Scully' today and 'Scully' had done the last two autopsies. You usually make a distinction between the woman who was your partner and the woman who is William's mother. You're not doing that."

 

He raised his head. "I'm sorry. I thought I dialed the X-files office," he said sarcastically. "Did they put me through to the Bureau shrink by mistake?"

 

"I've noticed," Agent Reyes repeated, as if she and Dana didn't have their cyber-heads together whispering. "The Mayan beliefs don't fit with a UFO abduction scenario any more than the Hopi or Navajo legends do, Agent Mulder," she said, switching gears again. "There are stories of alien visitors, yes, but not abductions."

 

Mulder nodded at the phone.

 

"I'm still working on the tribe in Arizona. I should have answers for you by tomorrow."

 

"If my math's right, you have a year. Every May. Until the end of the world or I figure it out." He looked down at his bandaged hand and asked in a softer voice, "Why is Dana here?"

 

Another pause. "You'd have to ask her." Agent Reyes' cadence was hard enough to follow in person, but with only sound he couldn't tell if she'd finished speaking or not. "Being in Bellefleur again- She knows it's not easy for you."

 

"I keep seeing her," he told the phone, quietly enough the deputies and agents couldn't overhear. "Not flashbacks, and not dreams, though I've been dreaming about her, too. My old dreams. I mean I look up in broad daylight and see her. Corporeal. My Scully. I can feel her touching me."

 

Anyone else would have checked him for a head injury, but Agent Reyes asked, "Are you sure it's her doppelganger or psychic projection and not a super-soldier?"

 

"Whatever I'm seeing, it hasn't tried to kill me yet."

 

"Well, that's good," she said optimistically.

 

****

 

His head hurt from lack of sleep, and his stomach churned together the antibiotics with a take-out turkey sandwich and coffee someone brought him. Despite a day of hiding out in the deputies' bunker-like headquarters, Mulder still didn't have a helpful profile of the killer, paranormal or not. The local law enforcement agents kept congratulating him for knowing where the seventh body would be found, as if that was an accomplishment.

 

Being able to send the seventh victim home to his wife - to drink and smoke too much, and to, at sixty, drop dead from an aneurysm no one knew he had - that would have been something to congratulate him on.

 

"I can either talk to you here at the sheriffs' office or make a trip to the public library," Mulder explained tiredly to the web-cam. The little town of Bellefleur still thought of the Internet as new-fangled. "Everything else is dial-up."

 

Like a sullen child, Langly's image had his arms folded across his chest and his lips sealed in an unhappy line.

 

Frohike leaned toward the camera and told Mulder confidentially, "He's not comfortable speaking in front of all the fuzz." His unshaven face moved left and right. "Is Dr. Scully with you?"

 

Mulder sat back from the computer on his loaner desk. "I'm working. I'm in Oregon. Why would Scully be with me?"

 

The Gunmen's faces looked uncomfortably, collectively guilty.

 

"Stop hacking into her e-mail account, Frohike," Mulder warned. "I mean it. She's plotting one man's murder this week. Possibly two men."

 

"She had some nice things to say to Agent Reyes about you," Frohike offered. "She-"

 

Byers gave Frohike a nudge, and Frohike shut up. "You said you called in regard to a case. What can we do for you, Mulder?"

 

"You can stop hacking into her e-mail. That's the FBI computer system; you're impersonating a federal agent."

 

"I read," Frohike asserted. "I did not hack. I am a gentleman."

 

"Langly?" Mulder said.

 

Langly shrugged one shoulder irritably.

 

"The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled privacy is a fundamental human right. For everyone," Mulder reminded him. "Even at Dragon-Con. Even fellatio from a pre-op transsexual dressed as Kara Thrace."

 

Langly stood, his chair squealing backward. He told Mulder to go frack himself and stalked off with his face flushed. Mixing alcohol with Ecstasy was ill-advised, and doing it at a convention of Sci-Fi geeks... A man could mistake not only his partner's gender, but species and genre.

 

Frohike's image watched Langly leave. The little man moved toward the computer and said in a low voice, "We agreed to never speak of that again."

 

"We also agreed you boys would stop hacking into her e-mail." He considered a second, and leaned closer to the webcam. "Are you hacking into my e-mail, too?"

 

"The guy at Dragon-Con made a pretty hot Starbuck," Melvin Frohike responded. "And your electric bill is due."

 

Mulder leaned back, mimicking Langly's earlier displeased posture. "Steal yourself some premium cable or get the new Netflix thing. Subscribe to ‘Readers Digest’ for all I care, but stay out of her e-mail or I'm letting Dana Scully deal with you. Scully could kick Kara Thrace's ass one-handed, let alone yours, Melvin."

 

Frohike hunkered down to ponder the pros and cons of the ass-kicking, his brow furrowed with effort. He didn't seem dissuaded.

 

"We've been following your investigation," Byers said, as if again trying to redirect the conversation. "Clearly, these killings suggest a well-coordinated government cover-up."

 

Mulder raised his eyebrows. "In what way?" The Gunmen thought everything suggested a government cover-up. Last month, Byers explained the government conspiracy behind the Happy Meal. "A cover-up of what?"

 

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Byers assured him.

 

"Thank God; the country can relax." He'd hoped for something more helpful. "Hell, I can go home."

 

Langly's red face reappeared in front of the camera lens at the Gunmen's headquarters. "You said it in front of the fuzz!" he yelled and stalked off again.

 

"He's going to be like this for days," Frohike grumbled.

 

Byers cleared his throat. "So, what can we do for you, Mulder?" he said a third time. "I can't remember the last time you contacted us about a case."

 

"I need you to cross-reference your abduction database with May death records. I'm looking for overlap between the coordinates of an abduction and the coordinates of a human death - particularly an unexplained or oddly explained death. I'm looking for any pattern. Clusters are good, but anything unusual you see... It's pretty wide open at this point."

 

Byers looked instantly intrigued. "Abductees?"

 

Mulder shook his head. "No. No dead abductees."

 

"Super-soldiers?" Byers guessed next.

 

Mulder looked at the camera wearily. His hand ached and his forehead hurt and someone had bored a hole into his sternum with a dull drill bit. "Can you get me a map of any anomalies from your database?"

 

"We aren't keeping a database of abductees, Agent Mulder," Byers said in the same way normal people said "I don't know how the cocaine got in my vehicle, officer."

 

"Fine. Whatever. Can you pull some numbers for me from the database you don't keep?"

 

"It'll take time," Byers responded, and crossed his arms thoughtfully. "We'll contact you. Don't use this connection again."

 

"Fine," Mulder muttered.

 

Frohike leaned in again, as if close proximity offered privacy. "So how is the little family trip to the beautiful Pacific northwest going? Could there be a re-kindling?"

 

"You mean some romance in between the flashbacks and the corpses and the six-year-old?" Mulder answered sarcastically.

 

"Nothing?" Frohike looked disappointed. "You gotta put the moves on."

 

Mulder held up his hand, showing them the bandage. "My move is falling. On a side note - and not related to Scully - William and I did get to see a practically topless FBI agent breast-feeding a Kindergartener yesterday."

 

Behind Byers and Frohike, Langly stalked past again, still flushed. He paused long enough to yell at the computer screen, "In front of the frackin' fuzz!"

 

Ignoring Langly, Frohike leaned close to the camera and asked earnestly, "How was it?"

 

****

 

Mulder had suspected Dana's hyper-focus derived from, for once, not being the biggest scandal in the Scully clan. In 2001, Brother Charlie shipped out with a wife, a three-year-old daughter, and new baby girl at home in Norfolk - in addition to his ex-wife and three teenage boys in Harrisburg - and returned a year later with a new wife and another new baby girl.

 

Turned out, Brother Bill hadn't cornered the market on asshole in the Scully family. Brother Charlie was an ass of a different color. Trying to fill his father's shoes without ever growing into them, Bill put his back into being judgmental and over-bearing. Swell guys like Charlie gave your sister crabs and habitually misplaced their wallets when it was their turn to pick up the tab.

 

In 2002, Maggie Scully designated a week in July and rented a big beach house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The family get-together was not to be missed.

 

"No canceling, Mulder," Dana told him about five billion times. "No cases, no consults, no calls, no excuses. This is my family. We'll make some new memories."

 

Mulder didn't see anything wrong with their old memories - except she didn't remember them.

 

When he mailed the check for their share of the beach house, it was for double the correct amount. Charlie was short on cash that month, and if Mulder and Dana didn't make up for it, Mrs. Scully would pay the thousand bucks herself and not tell anyone.

 

Like his initial reaction to John Doggett, Mulder disliked Charles Scully before even meeting him, based on the facts of the case.

 

After the five billion and first lecture the night before about how important this family beach trip was, Mulder reminded Dana his elderly aunts in Boston were his only living family. While a global conspiracy had centered on his late parents and sister, his mother's family's biggest concern was Mulder reproducing with a shiksa. And having his son christened - one of Mulder's this-is-what-Scully-would-have-wanted decisions made during her abduction, and at her mother's urging. His aunts raised their eyebrows but sent William savings bonds for Hanukah and again for Christmas so they covered all the bases. Unlike Mrs. Scully, they didn't try to call William 'Billy.' Unlike Brother Bill, they didn't refer to Mulder as 'the son of a bitch who knocked Dana up,' and unlike Brother Charlie, Mulder's relatives paid their own way.

 

Needless to say, Mulder had spent the night before on his side of Scully's bed, cuddling with his self-righteousness.

 

No big change there.

 

He brought their toddler to sleep with them, which Dana said promoted poor sleep hygiene and helicopter parenting. Mulder's sleep hygiene remained iffy, but the chub scout slept like a log. Mulder didn't know anything about 'helicopter parenting' - nor did he care - as long his helicopter was Airwolf.

 

They'd picked Mrs. Scully up at seven AM in Baltimore. Dana and her mother spent the ten-hour drive dissecting Brother Charlie's life and planning for any possible contingency with New Wife - still sight unseen. Old Wife and Old-Old Wife weren't coming or bringing their children, which Mrs. Scully bemoaned from Arlington to Richmond, Virginia. New Wife had a teenage son from a previous relationship, and Dana's mother pronounced the word 'relationship' the same way she did as she talked about William.

 

William was her daughter's son from her 'relationship' with her former partner.

 

Who drove the car.

 

And heard them talking.

 

Mrs. Scully and William sat in the back seat of the Volvo, with William in a car seat and Mrs. Scully manning the family vacation-planning ready room. The toddler's expression, as Mulder glanced in the rearview mirror, was 'help me, Daddy.'

 

Mulder's Blackberry in his pocket, set to vibrate, went off every ten minutes after Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Each time it buzzed, Dana looked at him and silently dared him to answer it. He'd overseen the ISU for three weeks and gone through two secretaries. In addition to the profiles he needed to generate, Mulder inherited a backlog of files the Syndicate would have envied. He had new profilers to mentor and old profilers to keep an eye on, and anything not anyone else's job became his job.

 

And Dana wanted to go to the beach.

 

Traffic crept along in the one lane, bumper to bumper, for miles until it vanished into the horizon. The driver of a red minivan in front of him liked to slam on his brakes for no reason Mulder could discern. They were within running distance of the beach house, according to the map. Mulder wanted to get out of the car, take his son, and run. This wasn't him, this wasn't his life, and he couldn't stand another minute of it, let alone five solid days.

 

He had his pistol in the trunk. Five days of this family togetherness and he'd have to shoot someone or something.

 

He'd start by killing the idiot driver of the minivan.

 

Mulder must have looked agitated, because Dana took his hand and rested their interlaced fingers on the center console. Her touch didn't soothe him like it had a decade ago, but it helped. He exhaled, tried to relax, and stopped plotting homicide. If she wanted this, he could do it.

 

"Have you and Fox thought of getting married?" Mrs. Scully asked, leaning forward.

 

"We haven't talked about it lately," Dana answered evasively, which was true - lately being defined as since before the baby was born and within any time period she remembered.

 

"William's getting older..." Mrs. Scully said, sounding as neutral as Switzerland yet as judgmental as possible. "He's going to start asking questions." She paused, refilled her maternal guilt dispenser, and asked, "Fox, are you still staying with Dana?"

 

Mrs. Scully noted the fine point frequently: Mulder didn't live with her daughter; he stayed with her daughter, like he'd been down on his luck for the last eighteen months. None of this living-in-sin nonsense. They needed to get married, learn to hate each other, and get divorced - the way nice people like Brother Charlie did.

 

Mrs. Scully knew Mulder lived with Dana because he'd answered the phone last night at ten when she called, and also at six this morning when she called.

 

"I still have my apartment in Alexandria." A second later, he added, "The lease is up at the end of this month."

 

"Have you two thought of buying a house?"

 

"We looked at one a few weeks ago," Mulder answered.

 

"Which one?" Dana asked, as Mulder's pocket buzzed again.

 

"Assistant Director Cavender's house. The two-story with the big yard and the garage. We drove past it on the way to look at the hippy-dippy preschool for the chub scout."

 

She nodded. "That was a nice house."

 

"Do you want me to talk to AD Cavender?" Mulder asked.

 

"Okay," she'd answered casually.

 

That satisfied Mrs. Scully for the moment: he wouldn't let her daughter and grandson be homeless. She went back to having silly one-sided conversations with William, who - while perfectly capable of speaking - regarded his grandmother with a silent, skeptical look he'd inherited from his mother.

 

"We had a nice time on Martha's Vineyard," Dana reminded Mulder quietly. "Relax. It will be okay."

 

He nodded and moved their joined hands from the console to his thigh. "The Outer Banks is one of the most haunted places in the United States. The lost colony? Blackbeard's ghost? The Brown Mountain lights - we never did figure those out. Do you think we could sneak off for an afternoon and investigate?"

 

She squeezed his hand and reminded him, "This is a family trip."

 

"You are my family," he answered.

 

If he took a week off, he wanted to spend it with her. Poke around Roanoke Island and listen to the old pirate and ghost stories. Take William to the beach. Watch the stars and let her tell him about the night sky. Listen to her lecture him about physics and E=MC2 if he mentioned alien visitation. Make pasta for three, pour wine for two, and try out the hot tub after the baby was asleep. See if they could remember how to be friends and lovers, not merely roommates with a toddler in common.

 

His Scully would have been up for a few pirate legends, and even some pirate rum. She would have investigated so she could keep an eye on him and spout Scientific Reason 101.

 

Mulder tried to stay focused on what was important. In the back of his mind, though, the bad thoughts lingered; he loved a woman who no longer existed while living with a woman who looked like her. He didn't even dream of His Scully anymore. He dreamed of hooks and saw blades and UFOs silently stalking him and his son in the darkness.

 

"Mulder, it will be okay," she'd assured him again and asked, "What are the Brown Mountain lights?"

 

Traffic hadn't moved in ten minutes. Ten hours, ten years, and they remained in the car, trying to get somewhere while the entire world got in their way.

 

"Just a story," he remembered telling her, because it made his heart hurt to try to explain.

 

****

 

"Agent Mulder," a young woman's voice said, and a hand touched his shoulder. "Sir?"

 

Mulder blinked his eyes and shook his head to clear it. He'd given up on the case momentarily, leaned back in the chair, and decided to rest his eyes for a second. According to the clock on the wall, an hour had passed.

 

The female deputy stood beside his desk, her expression hesitant. "Oh, I hate to wake you."

 

Mulder rolled his neck and stretched his arms up, trying to work out the kinks. His chest still hurt, but not as badly as earlier. His face felt stubbly, and yesterday's shower had worn off. Going back to his motel room admitted defeat, and besides, he was working on the case.

 

Or something.

 

He'd reached the "Damn it Indy, where doesn't it hurt?" stage.

 

George Lucas had a new movie coming out, which - Internet rumor had it - featured a graying Indiana Jones still kicking ass and, after all the drama, ending up with Marion. If Indy and Marion could manage a happy ending despite Nazi scientists and evil cults and aliens, how hard could it be?

 

Maybe he needed the bullwhip and the fedora, though Mulder thought a baseball cap and a pistol should be equally effective.

 

His shoulder. If Dana needed a place to kiss, the old scar on his shoulder didn't hurt at the moment, and it was fairly clean.

 

She'd forwarded her preliminary autopsy findings to him, the SAC, and the Assistant Director. Mulder's phone hadn't rung, though he'd worn the battery down checking to make sure he had it turned on. Probably due to sleep deprivation, he was doing a Lady Macbeth; he smelled her on his skin, on his clothes.

 

He was not calling her.

 

Under no circumstances was he calling her.

 

"Dr. Scully asked me to give you this," the deputy said, and Mulder blinked at her again, looking to see what she held.

 

They communicated by messenger. How mature. Soon there would be lawyers and mediators, and they'd be screaming at each other over who got William on Christmas day and who got Christmas Eve - all because he lacked a fedora and a bullwhip.

 

The young Native American deputy held out a dinky plastic spork.

 

"I don't know," she said in response to his puzzlement. "Dr. Scully said to give it to you."

 

He took it. "Where is she?"

 

"Outside."

 

The headquarters had cleared out for the day. The sun had started sliding behind the trees as he stepped outside, dutifully bringing his spork and his resolve not to apologize. Or fight with her. Or call her. Or sleep with her again. Or, if he did, he'd use a condom and ask about the tattoo - unless she wanted a baby, in which case he wanted to get married.

 

Like the inside of his mouth after his catnap, Mulder's resolve was fuzzy.

 

Dana sat on a park bench in the square near the drug store, facing away from him. William played on the grass among the trees.

 

"Wanna fork, G-woman?" he asked sarcastically, coming up behind her.

 

She turned her head, looking back at him, and held up her own fork. "You came prepared."

 

"If I came prepared, we wouldn't be parents," he answered, but wished he could take it back. "What is he doing?"

 

William squatted at the base of a maple tree. He held up a sunflower seed, watching the high branches expectantly. He laid the seed down and backed away, waiting. Behind him, beneath the neighboring birch tree, a trio of squirrels ate the seeds he'd left there.

 

"He wants a pet squirrel," Dana said. "He's trying to lure one down. We're raising the next Crocodile Hunter."

 

"I don't mean to be insensitive but having watched hour upon hour of Animal Planet with him, I think one Crocodile Hunter was plenty for this millennium. For this epoch. Let's hope for Jane Goodall. Desmond Morris."

 

William noticed he had the wrong tree. He left a few seeds as bait at the maple and moved to the birch tree. The squirrels sounded the alarm and scrambled for the top branches. They jumped over to the maple tree, and silently ventured down to eat the fresh sunflower seeds as William waited beneath the birch.

 

"How long has he been at this?"

 

"About ten minutes. I admire his commitment, though not his strategy." Dana gestured for Mulder to sit down on the bench. "Like you, there is no reasoning with him."

 

The pumpkin pie beside her had a neat wedge missing, and fork marks indicating she and William had decided to eat it out of the aluminum pan.

 

"It worries me a Jack Russell terrier could figure out the squirrels have the upper hand, but our uber-child can't," he told her. "How did we get a son who loves animals?"

 

"I like animals," she asserted. "You said I had a dog. You have fish. All with an unusually high attrition rate," she conceded.

 

"In case he catches a slow, stupid one - he's up to date on his shots, right?"

 

She nodded. "He is, and I put Frontline on the back of his neck, so your little Desmond is also protected from fleas and ticks."

 

He chuckled and relaxed.

 

William switched trees again, and noticing Mulder, called, "Mulder, Mommy said I can have one if I can catch one."

 

"Where are you going to keep him?" Mulder called back.

 

Dana cleared her throat and pointed her fork at the empty cardboard box beside her feet. "Your son has a plan. Not a good plan, but a plan."

 

"Scully said Squirrelly can live at your house," William told him.

 

Mulder gave her an annoyed look, and in return, she offered him the pumpkin pie.

 

"You've changed the bandage on your hand," she noticed. "That's not the way I wrapped it."

 

"The doctor did it this morning."

 

"Did he-"

 

"He put in four stitches and gave me horse pills," he answered. "I'm supposed to follow-up with my regular doctor."

 

"I'm your regular doctor. Name the last time you saw anyone but me?"

 

"Socially or medically?" he quipped and got a little smile. He draped his arm along the back of the bench, near her shoulders, and carved a bite of pumpkin flesh out of the pie pan.

 

William came over for a bite of pie, encouraging kisses from each of them, and to get the box so he could show Squirrelly his potential home. Behind the trees, the setting sun glowed orange and purple and crimson through the clouds.

 

"Your friend Stephanie called me again," Dana said once their son was out of earshot. "She wanted to apologize if she intruded or gave me the wrong idea." She added, "I thought that was nice of her."

 

"She is nice. Funny. Smart," he offered tentatively. "Her son's in fifth grade. He plays basketball. She's a research chemist, I think, and she can run like the wind."

 

"She said she worried because it wasn't like you not to call, so I assume this is a recent thing."

 

"I don't know that it's a thing." Mulder paused but admitted, "I don't know that it's not, either."

 

"Does William know?"

 

"Yes," he answered. "But there's not much to know. She's a friend. She's a tall, pretty friend. I like her, but we're not picking out china patterns."

 

"You're a grown man, and I overreacted," she said, sounding as if she'd rehearsed the sentence a hundred times. "I'm sorry."

 

"I am and you did," he agreed.

 

Their son modified his strategy. With the bag of seeds on the ground in front of him, William tried to balance on one foot while his hands stretched up to the sky, like branches.

 

"Now he's a tree," Mulder observed, glad to have something else to talk about. "Think the squirrels are fooled?"

 

"How do you know that's the Tree Pose?" Dana wanted to know. "When I told you they offered yoga classes for runners, you made fun of me. Did you go?"

 

"No. God, no. Rule thirty-four."

 

"You think you're invincible?" she guessed.

 

"Yoga porn. It was on sale. I found out why."

 

"Yoga porn won't help you relax your shoulder muscles as you run," she lectured. "Or improve your flexibility or prevent muscle injuries. You aren't a teenager anymore, and balanced movement and range of motion is important. Ask Stephanie to go with you."

 

He knew two things: first, her last sentence was the most hollowly polite suggestion in history, and second, he'd like her to choose a different topic.

 

"I'll live dangerously," he said.

 

"Fine." She sighed. "The agents said you were at the station today, working, but I didn't see a profile from you in my e-mail. Are you still formulating?"

 

"No, I've formulated." He moved his sore hand so it touched her shoulder as he got a second bite of pie. "Remember how I said we weren't looking for a vampire? Scully, we're looking for a vampire."

 

"A vampire?" she said incredulously.

 

"A psychic vampire of some sort. Not the sparkly kind; those are fiction. Trust me, real vampires do not sparkle. They do, however, bite."

 

"I'm ordering you a head CT."

 

"Name one reason why this killer can't be a psychic vampire?" he challenged.

 

"Because they don't exist," she supplied in the same scornful tone.

 

"Of course they exist. You said it: 'God turned off their life.' Since I can't get a search warrant for The Great Beyond, a psychic vampire is my working hypothesis."

 

"A vampire?" she repeated. "You can't be serious."

 

"Raise your hand if you spent ten years as senior agent of the X-files unit, and you are the current head spook of the spooky services department."

 

His hand went up.

 

She turned toward him, plastic fork in mid-air and a skeptical crease between her eyebrows. "Special Agent Spooky, over Labor Day weekend you thought a lizard man was loose in rural Georgia. You called me at four in the morning and woke me out of a sound sleep to ask about the correspondence between human years and lizard years. I thought you were drunk, at first. Why in the world would I know that?"

 

"First, my profile caught a killer who had lizard scales tattooed all over his body. He'd had cosmetic dental work to simulate lizard teeth. He operated under the delusion he was a reptile. If that's not a Lizard Man, I don't know what is," he said, trying to sound assertive rather than defensive. "Second-"

 

"Why was there no mention of any Lizard Man case in the media? I even checked Google and 'The Weekly World Informer.' No Lizard Man in Georgia last summer."

 

"Second," he continued, "Why wouldn't I call you? You knew the correspondence between dog and human years off the top of your head."

 

"When?" she wanted to know. "The dog-faced deputy sheriff sideshow case in Florida?"

 

He hesitated. "No. A long time ago. I gave you an Apollo 11 mission key-ring for your birthday, and said I celebrated once every seven years, like dog years. The key-ring meant so much you gave it to Agent Doggett," he added.

 

"Why would I give a gift from you to Agent Doggett?"

 

"Beats the hell out of me," he said tightly. "I told myself you were pregnant and hormonal."

 

She shook her head. "Well, I don't remember that, but if you think this case is an X-file, it is Agent Doggett's province."

 

"The hell it is," he shot back. "Agent Doggett's never seen vampirism, and I have. Several times. It's my case."

 

"It's not your case. You're a profiler," she said, sounding progressively angrier. "Arguably the best profiler the FBI has ever had. What happened to flying to Oregon, writing them a profile, and going home? You want to pretend you're a field agent and go chasing through the woods after a vampire?"

 

"A psychic vampire. I'm here, and I'm damn sure not calling in John Doggett to swagger around and find nothing."

 

"I don't understand why you dislike Agent Doggett so much, Mulder. He's an excellent FBI agent. Because of a key-chain? Because he was my partner for a few months? Or because you think his actions caused me to be abducted?"

 

"Because he sits in my chair and answers my phone," he snapped.

 

The furrow between her brows went from disbelieving to indignant. "Is that what you're so angry at me about? You don't get to wave your badge at the sky and chase UFOs and Bigfoot anymore? Because of Will?"

 

"I'm not the one who left," he argued. "You don't even remember, so don't presume to tell me what I'm angry about. I came back because of you and William. I didn't put a gun to my head because of you and William. I lost my best friend, my lover, my partner, and my soul mate. I got a son with a different last name than mine and a woman who doesn't remember loving me or having him. So no, losing the X-files is not what I'm angry at you about."

 

He knew he should stop talking. He should get his temper in check, but she'd hit a nerve and he didn't.

 

"He's my son. Mine!" he barked at her. "If you didn't want to tell anyone - fine. It's your body, and I know I wasn't there - but John Doggett doesn't get to fuss over you and pretend."

 

"You're crazy!" she yelled back. "What the hell are you talking about?"

 

"You think losing the X-files compares to losing you? You think doing the right thing was hard when I did it for you? You're the one who's crazy, Scully."

 

"Excuse me for letting you down," she snapped.

 

"You know, the first time I fell in love with you, you'd managed to work through your daddy issues," he responded. And that, as he would have predicted, was the final straw.

 

She flung the pie across the park. The bright aluminum shell and wobbling trajectory looked like a 1950's science fiction movie. As the pie saucer crashed to the ground, Scully stood up and told him to go to hell. According to her, Mulder was self-absorbed and cynical and paranoid. In turn, he called her a petty, controlling, masochistic bitch who, as usual, didn't know what the hell she was talking about.

 

Between the trees, William stood wide-eyed and watched them, now in Cowering Child Pose. The yelling ended instantly, but silent accusatory looks continued to be traded.

 

"Come on, baby," Dana ordered tersely, as she stared daggers into Mulder. "We're going back to the motel."

 

"I wanna catch a squirrel," William answered, his lower lip quivering. "I made a habitat."

 

"We'll try to catch a squirrel at home. Our neighborhood has lots of squirrels."

 

The boy looked to Mulder for back-up, but all Mulder managed around the lump in his throat was, "Go with your mother," sounding exactly like his own father had.

 

Once Dana and William disappeared, the trio of squirrels came to examine the pie ruins.

 

"Here," he told one of the squirrels, and pointed to his not-sore shoulder. "It doesn't hurt here."

 

A tree rat twitched its nose at him uncertainly and went back to picking through the pumpkin rubble. Mulder slouched on the park bench, his arms crossed, watching the sun set.

 

He'd gotten two bites of the pie; no wonder he felt cheated.

 

****

 

Mulder would sit on the park bench until he froze to death. He'd commit suicide via exposure on an early May night in Oregon to show Scully he could commit to something.

 

The sky had darkened to the color of a bad bruise. As the first stars emerged, his temper cooled along with the evening. His plastic spork lay on the grass nearby, and the empty pie pan a couple feet beyond it. The squirrels had picked over the rubble and returned to the treetops, where they chattered down at him judgmentally.

 

Mulder saw Gemini in the heavens. Orion. A red dot maybe Mercury or Mars. "The heartless voids and immensities of the universe." Melville. Mulder never thought of Melville that he didn't think of Scully, and her likening him to Ahab chasing the white whale.

 

She didn't want to spend her life falling, and he didn't want to spend his life behind a picket fence. He couldn't be the man she wanted, but she didn't know him well enough to stop him from trying.

 

She'd taught him the skies, and how to have faith, and how to love more than he'd dreamed he ever could.

 

"There was a storm for every calm," Melville wrote. A horizon for every sky. An FBI-designated Yin to his Yang.

 

He wanted what he supposed all men wanted: a woman's soft hands and strong love. To save the world. Have a beer after his son's baseball game. Simple things. Normal things.

 

It shouldn't be so damn hard.

 

In the shadows across the park, he noticed a figure watching him. He saw a small, auburn-haired woman in a long skirt and a bulky cardigan sweater wrapped around her. He'd seen her on the beach. In the forest. In his dreams.

 

She didn't approach or speak or raise her hand. She watched him from among the trees. He stared back from the park bench, afraid to move and break the gossamer thread connecting his world and hers. Eventually, the darkness gathered and she faded into the night, but he still felt her presence the way he felt the pull of the tide or the full moon.

 

The worst way to miss a woman was being near her, yet never touching her. 

 

She was real, Mulder told himself. He wasn't hallucinating or deluding himself.

 

She was there, he told himself, and he had to find her, or let her go, or go crazy.

 

****

 

"I don't wanna fight with you," he said as soon as she picked up her cell phone, before she even had a chance to say hello. Mulder traced the rough, lopsided heart scratched into the wooden bar and told her, "I hate fighting with you. My parents fought all the time, and I'm not gonna fight with you."

 

"Where are you, Mulder? It's midnight." Her voice sounded concerned, and he liked hearing her sound concerned. "Have you been drinking?"

 

"Oh, I have. Turns out, Bellefleur has a bar. They sell Bud and Bud Light. FBI agents who can't solve cases drink half-price."

 

His last sentence earned a sarcastic cheer from the half-dozen agents crowded into the corner booth. Agent Smithson worked on her third beer, Agent Martelli held his fourth, and Martelli's hand rested on her knee beneath the table. Across the room, a CNN cameraman put the moves on the Fox News microphone woman, while the female deputy sat alone at the other end of the bar, getting up to feed quarters to the jukebox. Tom Petty had finished "Don't Come Around Here No More," and The Eagles eased into "Desperado."

 

"Who-rah," Mulder agreed. "I got an e-mail. You and me: Homeland Security's concluded we're only a danger to each other. Also, the Gunmen didn't find shit in their database I don't know. Nada. Bupkis. I'm telling you, it's not paranoia if the entire universe really is out to get me."

 

"Are you driving?"

 

"It doesn't matter. Scully, don't ever think I don't... Never. William and I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you."

 

"I'm putting Will in the car and I'm coming to get you. I'll be there in ten minutes. Sit tight."

 

"You don't know where I am, and the whole town isn't ten blocks wide. I'm gonna walk. I wanted to talk to you. Hear your voice. I like your voice."

 

"You're drunk. There is a killer out there. I'm coming to get you," she insisted, and he heard clothing rustle. "I'm getting dressed."

 

He drained his beer bottle and lined it up alongside its empty brothers on the bar before he told her, "I love you. You. As is. No take-backs. No exclusionary clauses or fine print. The rest of what I said? Water under the bridge and insecure bullshit. You've never disappointed anyone, let alone me."

 

"Ten minutes," she assured him, and car keys jingled. "Stay put. Don't let the vampire get you."

 

"Psychic vampire," he corrected. He slid off the barstool and went to the front door of the little bar. "Don't wake William."

 

"I'm not leaving him at the motel."

 

As he left the bar, he asked, "Dana, what are you wearing?"

 

A few seconds of silence elapsed. "Exactly how much have you had to drink?"

 

Outside, Mulder leaned against the signpost in front of the bar. "If you're dressed, go out on the porch."

 

In the distance, he saw her motel room door open and the warm yellow light pool out into the darkness.

 

"Look left, across the playground and the parking lot," he instructed. "See the sign for the car lot? See the streetlight past it?"

 

"Okay," she answered uncertainly. "I see the streetlight."

 

"Keep looking."

 

The bar's name was Fay's Tavern, but Fay must have fallen on hard times. The parking lot needed the potholes filled, the men's room needed condemned, and most of the letters in the neon sign out front had burned out, leaving 'Fa T e.'

 

At Quantico, they called this a clue.

 

"What am I even looking for?" her voice asked.

 

Mulder turned his phone around and waved it back and forth so she could see the lit screen. "Come walk me home, Agent Scully."

 

He saw her put a hand on her hip. "I think you can make it."

 

He signaled with the phone for her to come to him.

 

She arrived a moment later, wearing his FBI sweatshirt and carrying the receiver for the old baby monitor. When he did laundry yesterday, he returned the sweatshirt to her room, along with his raggedy Oxford T-shirt. If she wanted to wear them, he wanted her to have them.

 

A thought occurred to him, in his intoxicated brain. In high school, a girl wearing a guy's clothes meant something. It meant the adolescent version of "I want to have your baby," and the physical demonstration of "My limbic system loves you, too."

 

The I in FBI.

 

"Sorry," he told her again, this time face to face. She didn't slap him, so he put his forearms on her shoulders and told her hair, "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

 

"It's okay," she assured him, in the same voice she used to soothe William. She looked up at him and traced her fingertips down his face. She didn't say it, but he knew what she thought. If he hadn't shaved, the row of old scars on his cheeks showed.

 

She stepped back. "Come on."

 

Inside, on the juke box, Willie Nelson started singing "Always on My Mind" in his worn, raspy voice. "You have to dance with me," Mulder insisted.

 

"No, I don't. You're drunk, and it's the middle of the night, and it's cold. Let's go, Mulder."

 

"I'm not that drunk, it's not that cold, and you're beautiful. I want you to dance with me."

 

"I'm not dancing with you," she said irritably.

 

"It's my birthday. You hafta dance with me."

 

"It's not your birthday."

 

He reached for her hand, drawing her to him as she insisted, "I'm not in a dancing mood, Mulder. All I want is to make sure you don't get attacked by a vampire or trip over something and incur a traumatic brain injury."

 

"A psychic vampire," he reminded her yet again, and put his sore hand on her waist.

 

She didn't pull away.

 

Swaying in time to the music, he leaned down, rested his scruffy jaw against her head, and whispered to her, "I hate being in this fucking town again. Whoever said a man has to face his demons, he hasn't met my demons. This isn't getting back on the horse; this is going back to the mouth of Hell. All I want to do is run."

 

"I know," she answered, still not quite dancing with him but not fleeing the scene, either.

 

"Whatever possessed you to come with me, thank you."

 

"Do you think I'd let you come back here alone?"

 

He considered a moment, told her, "No," and lowered his mouth to hers. He kissed her beneath the streetlamp like they had all the time in the world. The baby monitor purred quiet static, a child's breathing, and the news program on in her motel room. "You smell nice," he said, the master of drunken eloquence. "Like... Like rain."

 

"You smell like a homeless alcoholic."

 

"I've had a rough week," he answered, and kissed her again.

 

Dancing - at least the part the involved moving his feet - had been momentarily forgotten.

 

"Who knew saving the world would be the easy part?" he whispered to her. "Nazis, cults, aliens: it doesn't look so tough in the movies."

 

"We didn't save the world," the voice of reason reminded him.

 

"We did," he promised her. "You and me, we saved the world in spades. We couldn't save us from each other."

 

She stepped back, keeping hold of his hand. "Come on, Mulder. You can sleep it off on the sofa in my room."

 

"Song's not over yet," he reminded her, and pulled her back to him.

 

She sighed, but didn't resist.

 

The pavement was uneven, and bats swooped around the streetlight, chasing insects. The faint smell of urine drifted from behind the bar, but the moon loomed huge and yellow overhead, nearly full. William slept, the stars watched, and the jukebox inside moved on to Eric Clapton in his post-Cream, early Dereck and the Dominos days.

 

Remembering he had invited her to dance, Mulder stepped back and pushed her away, then twirled her back, putting his arm around her as she returned. He saw a tired smile indicating his life was no longer in imminent peril.

 

"Have we danced before?"

 

"Maybe one or ten times," he admitted.

 

"Was the ambience this nice?"

 

"This might be a step up. Romance is tough with a child, a psychic vampire on the loose, a shit-load of emotional baggage, and a looming apocalypse. Especially on an FBI budget. Do you know the amount of paperwork involved in requisitioning an out-of-season pie?"

 

"Do you know a twelfth-century Persian poem inspired this song? The poem is about a historical prince in love with another man's wife. Layla and the Madman," she informed him. "Layla dies and Prince Majnun goes insane before dying himself. In some versions, he goes insane, kills her, and kills himself. It's a love story."

 

"Not one with a happy ending."

 

She said pragmatically, "Not every love story has a happy ending. That doesn't mean it isn't a great story."

 

He tilted his head thoughtfully, and his skull felt too heavy for the muscles supporting it. He respected her cinematic practicality, but he'd learned something else from her: believing things didn't make them true. This time, Scully had it wrong. Good love stories always had happy endings.

 

"What, Mulder?" she wanted to know.

 

He kissed her, and, still swaying more or less in time to the music, promised, "In the end - of the day, of the world - for me, there's only ever gonna be you. All roads lead back to you."

 

"You're drunk," she reminded him.

 

"You're beautiful," he countered, and kept dancing.

 

****


	4. Chapter 4

__

7 Days in May

 

****

 

Day 4: I, for one, do not welcome our new gray-skinned overlords.

 

****

 

Mulder was forever awake as the rest of the world slept.  Everyone else dreamed of innocent, fanciful things, but Mulder watched the darkness and wrestled the sharp-toothed, long-clawed monsters lurking in nightmares and shadows.

 

They'd write it on his tombstone in the near future. As UFO's blocked out the stars and heavens rained brimstone and black oil, his epitaph would be, 'I told you something was out there, Scully.'

 

In the dark motel room, she and William slept in a silent huddle beneath the bed covers, while Mulder sprawled on the sofa unceremoniously. His back and neck hurt and his temples pulsed warningly. His mouth tasted of soured brewer's yeast and three-week-dead woodland creature.

 

Scully had been right. He did smell like a homeless alcoholic.

 

In the public interest - and since the public footed the bill for a motel room he'd yet to spend a night in - he stumbled next door to shower and shave. He found a clean pair of shorts, and a clean T-shirt with a pair of lacy black panties Velcro-ed to it by static cling. Mulder put the T-shirt on and stuffed the panties in his carry-on bag. He made a half-hearted mental note to return them to Scully later.

 

His teeth ached as he brushed them. The middle-aged man in the mirror squinted back at him uncomfortably, flinching at the anemic bathroom light.

 

He looked closer, confirming his reflection didn't have spikes through its wrists or hooks in its jaws. Since he wasn't dead, Mulder chased two Tylenol with three little plastic cups of water and went on with his life.

 

He rewrapped his hand and found a pair of loose running pants. Instead of running, though, he returned to the neighboring motel room, ostensibly to see if Scully might be awake at 5:22 AM.

 

To see if she might want to get coffee, discuss the case.

 

To see if she might want to discuss the two of them.

 

William opened his eyes and sat up as his father entered. Mulder pointed the boy toward the bathroom to make sure he didn't pee in a corner or closet. Scully sat up as well, blinking and not awake, either. She wore those cotton pajamas again - the ones from Disneyland so prim they were sexy.

 

"Bathroom," Mulder told her quietly. He switched on the television as he passed it, turning the volume low. "I got him; you don't need to get up. Go back to sleep."

 

She sighed in what might have been resignation as she lay back down. "How do you feel?" she asked softly.

 

"Comparatively, I've felt worse. Objectively, like I'm not a teenager anymore."

 

"Fluids," she suggested. "Acetaminophen."

 

"I have things under control."

 

He sat down on her bed to wait for William.

 

"Rest," she mumbled.

 

His pillow and blanket lay on the sofa, but it was foolish to waste a king-sized bed and a warm Scully.

 

"Okay," he agreed, and curled up behind her.

 

The toilet never flushed, but the mattress dipped as William returned. Mulder reached over to tousle the boy's hair and kiss Scully's cheek.

 

If their son asked why his parents were spooned up in bed together, the answer would be 'important FBI business,' which would occupy them until at least 7:30 AM. Possibly, 8:00.

 

Through Scully's pajama top, Mulder traced the outer edge of her breast with his fingertips. He located the little lump, but he couldn't tell if it had grown or shrunk in four days - and he didn't even know if it should shrink so quickly.

 

He'd realized years ago, before William began to crawl, he could raise their son alone if he had to. If Scully didn't return. He never envisioned himself as a father - or felt any need to become one - but the day-to-day care wasn't hard. Feed the baby, protect the baby, and do not barter the baby to a shadowy syndicate to be used as a lab rat. Rinse and repeat as needed.

 

Fatherhood was messy and time-consuming, undignified and mired in mundane details, but the same could be said for some of his old assignments. He'd take an afternoon of "Meerkat Manor" over marathon wire taps any day and choose a three-hundredth bedtime rereading of Paul Revere over telephone background checks.

 

When he looked at William and saw Scully - His Scully - or as Mulder looked at the sky and knew what the future held, it got hard.

 

Their son learned easily and stayed remarkably healthy. Teachers noticed; doctors commented. William walked early, talked early, even for the son of a woman who rewrote Einstein. Perhaps William guessed his last birthday gift by chance. Sometimes, he announced Mulder's thoughts aloud. William didn't get sick as every other kid in his preschool came down with strep. The boy was observant and intuitive, and he could have sailed through the first six years of his life without an earache or a sore throat by dumb luck.

 

A little shiver of fear still ran though Mulder. He wanted his son to be normal. William deserved to be normal, but whether he was or not... Even without Scully, Mulder could protect William from the entire universe - or die trying to protect him.

 

Mulder couldn't bear to lose Scully. Not again. Not now.

 

He could stand to be alone. He could be afraid. Being afraid was better than being dead, but being empty wasn't. Even a thousand miles away, even if she wanted nothing to do with him, even if she didn't remember him, he needed her. Scully was the nightlight to his nightmare monsters, and he needed to know her light still burned.

 

Bringing his hand higher, Mulder combed his fingers through her long hair. The strands felt like raw silk. On the back of her neck, at the base of her hairline, he felt a bump the size of a lowercase letter O.

 

"Shrapnel," she called it these days, but he'd convinced her to leave it alone. When they lived together, he'd check the tiny bump as he kissed her neck or rubbed her shoulders or as she slept. If the raised point was Braille, it would symbolize life.

 

He put his hand on her waist. His thumb touched the snake tattoo on her back and his fingertips reached the new butterfly on her abdomen. Mulder wanted to know, but yet he didn't. He'd rather declare a tabula rasa and move on - if she wanted to move on - and try not to think about anything from before.

 

Because ignoring the elephant in the room had worked so well for them in the past.

 

Scully's eyes remained closed, but her hand came up and covered his. Her gesture indicated if he wanted to stay in bed with her, he couldn't be neurotic until dawn.

 

Mulder relaxed and committed himself to holding her and dozing to the cable news.

 

William slept soundly and radiated warmth.

 

The bedside clock said 5:43, and 5:59, and 6:07, and each corresponded to a wonderful time to be in a comfortable bed.

 

At 6:13, he heard footsteps outside, and a soft but rapid tapping on the door of the neighboring motel room.

 

"No," Dana said tonelessly, as if he'd asked her the stupidest question imaginable. "For the love of God."

 

"They can't have found another body," he muttered. "They must have the wrong room."

 

After a moment of knocking, a breathless woman's voice started calling, "Special Agent Mulder? Special Agent Mulder? Are you awake, Agent Mulder?"

 

Dana sighed in frustration. "I'm going to start putting you out at dusk with the recycling."

 

Mulder rolled out of bed with a groan and opened Scully's motel room door.

 

Teresa Hoese stood on the next doorstep, wearing a bathrobe over her pajamas. Her black hair looked tousled, her face flushed, and her brown eyes seemed too bright and too wide.

 

"Teresa?" he said in disbelief.

 

"I had to see you," she whispered urgently, coming over to Scully's door and hovering nervously near him.

 

"No. Wrong." He regretted those final two beers and the two Tylenol hadn't been extra strength. "No seeing me. Me is off the market."

 

Behind him, Dana's voice repeated, "For the love of God," in the same flat tone, and muttered "Special Agent Romeo" as she headed to the bathroom.

 

"She's Dr. Nemman's daughter. Teresa Nemman Hoese," Mulder called over his shoulder.

 

Scully's lack of a response from the bathroom likely indicated her lack of caring.

 

"I saw him, Agent Mulder," Teresa insisted. "He's here. No one believes me, but I saw him."

 

"Who did you see?"

 

"Ray. I saw him," she said, still trying to catch her breath. "I got up to let the cat in, and he was there. In the yard. My Ray."

 

"Where is he now? Did he try to harm you?" Mulder asked her, and called, "Scully, hurry it up in there."

 

"No. No, he wouldn't try to hurt me. He, he, he talked with me. Kissed me. I showed him pictures of Stella. He's my Ray, Agent Mulder. He's at the house with Stella."

 

Mulder gestured for Teresa to come into Scully's room. He guided her into a chair and switched on the lamp beside the door.

 

Teresa was in an anxious disarray, making too many unnecessary movements. She plucked at her sleeve, adjusted her robe, and looked around the room, her eyes flitting from thing to thing. Noticing William sleeping, she smiled and said absently, "Your handsome son, Agent Mulder."

 

"Teresa, listen to me," Mulder said, getting her attention again. "Are you certain? Did Ray seem different to you in any way?"

 

"No." She shook her head. "It was like no time had passed at all. Ray's there, and he's real, but I, I know he shouldn't be. I know."

 

"Did you see a ship?" he tried. "Can you feel Them calling you?"

 

"No," she repeated with the same urgency. "No ship. I feel the same thing I feel in Bellefleur: the forest. You said those weren't dead abductees in the forest. What's happening, Agent Mulder?"

 

"I don't know. You, you stay here for a second. Stay with Agent Scully." Mulder could save the world while raising a son, but it was hard to do it shoeless and unarmed. "I'll be right back."

 

Teresa nodded obediently.

 

"Scully, she's staying here," he called to the bathroom.

 

Dana appeared dressed in a sweater and jeans, brushing her hair, and with an expression indicating she was fucking thrilled with her unexpected guest. Her wrath stemmed from the early hour and the lack of caffeine, however. She appeared in agreement if Teresa had intended a pre-dawn bootie call, it turned out to be the worst one in history.

 

By the time Mulder found his fleece pullover and socks, jumped into a pair of jeans, and located his shoes and holsters, a patrol car appeared in the parking lot. Its lights flashed blue and red but the siren was off.

 

Dr. Nemman's Jeep pulled up behind the patrol car. The doctor got out, looking as if he also dressed hurriedly. Like Teresa, his body language indicated the excitement had been going on for some time, and Mulder entered the fray late in the game.

 

"She's here. She's okay," Mulder assured her disheveled father and the deputy. "Let me talk to her."

 

"You stay out of this, hot shot," Dr. Nemman yelled, loudly enough two motel room windows lit up. "She's off her medication again and running around like a crazy woman."

 

Scully gave Teresa the medical once-over as Mulder returned to her motel room. Teresa followed Dana's penlight with her eyes, and told Scully the president and how many fingers she held up.

 

William woke up and watched curiously from the bed.

 

So far during Take Your Child to Work Week, their son learned Mommy and Daddy bickered a lot, held hands sometimes, slept together, and strange people showed up at their door at all hours. Mommy worked in a building with operating tables, no patients, and people-sized refrigerators. Daddy read files, fell down, and had women kiss him against his will.

 

Mulder didn't bother closing the motel room door so Dr. Nemman wouldn't have to bother pounding on it.

 

"As far as I can see, she's physically okay," Scully told Mulder. "This is Deputy Ray Hoese who she thinks she saw? He was abducted from Bellefleur at the same time as you and Teresa Nemman and Billy Miles. Wasn't Ray Hoese declared dead?"

 

"Being declared dead can be less permanent in certain zip codes."

 

"That's ridiculous, Mulder."

 

"Wanna see my death certificate with your signature on it?" he challenged, and returned his attention to Teresa.

 

"I can't leave my daughter," Teresa told him, starting to get upset. "I can't go with him. I can't."

 

"Does Ray want you to go with him?" Mulder asked gently. He squatted down so they were eye to eye.

 

"He, he wants to be with me," she answered, as if struggling to put it into words. "No, I don't have to go with him. He's not going to take me or anything."

 

Mulder nodded. He'd gotten the same impression each time he'd seen His Scully. She was a beacon for his soul, but not a tether or a trap. He felt drawn to her, but also free to go.

 

"When was the last time you took your pills, Teresa?" Dr. Nemman's voice demanded from the doorway.

 

A middle-aged deputy stood behind him, looking embarrassed. Outside, the patrol car's lights still flashed, and three Portland field agents, SAC Boyle, and the motel owner wandered over to Scully's room in their robes and pajamas to investigate.

 

One of the agents waved sleepily at William. William snaked a hand out from beneath the blankets to wave back.

 

"You can't go running off in the middle of the night," Dr. Nemman said, lecturing her. "You can't leave Stella."

 

"I take my pills. Ray is with Stella," she told her father, sounding childlike.

 

"Ray is dead," Dr. Nemman snapped, and she started to cry.

 

"Back off," Mulder suggested irritably. "You aren't helping your daughter, and you're sure as hell not helping me figure out what's happening. Teresa-"

 

"She's told me, Agent Mulder. She woke up and her husband was in the front yard. There was a sweet reunion and he wanted to see photographs of her daughter. He's with Stella and they're playing hide and seek. I wouldn't believe Teresa, so she came running over here to tell you. So, thank you for encouraging her delusion. How did you show Ray pictures of Stella?" he asked Teresa tersely. "We don't keep photos on the front porch."

 

"There was one on the table beside the front door," she said shakily. "I opened the door, reached in, and got it to show him. He said she was beautiful and he wanted to see Stella for real."

 

A thought occurred to Mulder - one making him glad William lay eight feet away, safe and sound. Like William, both of Stella's parents were abductees. He'd never checked Teresa Nemman's OB/GYN records to be certain, but he knew how a woman looked as she held a baby doctors told her she'd never be able to have. "Where are Ray and Stella, Teresa?" he asked slowly.

 

"He won't hurt her," she answered. "He would never hurt me or her." She took Mulder's hand as if desperate to anchor herself and to have someone believe her. "They're playing. They have to get to know each other again."

 

"Agent Mulder," Dr. Nemman said flatly. "Look outside."

 

Mulder glanced through the doorway. Dawn had arrived. In the back seat of Dr. Nemman's ancient Jeep sat a girl wrapped in a blanket and watching through the window with huge brown eyes.

 

"I picked Stella up out of bed, sound asleep, twenty minutes ago, and brought her with me after Teresa ran off. No one was in our yard or our house tonight, and my late son-in-law is not with his daughter as we speak. Teresa needs to be in the hospital," he said, for the first time not sounding like a pompous ass. "Honey, you need to be where they can help you."

 

"I want to see Ray!" she yelled, her face flushed and her fingers tight against Mulder's palm.

 

"Daddy?" William said uncertainly and sat up in the bed.

 

"It's okay, buddy," Mulder said. He raised his bandaged hand in a 'calm down' gesture as Scully went to sit with their son.

 

"They will lock you up again if you don't stop this nonsense," her father said. "Please, honey."

 

"They'd better lock me up again, too," Mulder said quietly, and gave her hand a supportive squeeze.

 

****

 

After some negotiations, insults and pleading from Dr. Nemman, and tears from his daughter, they agreed Teresa would go home. She'd take some medication meeting with Scully's approval, and get some sleep. She'd see her own doctor as soon as possible, who would make the final decision about the mental hospital.

 

"If he was my father, I'd probably be psychotic, too," Scully muttered as soon as their motel room cleared out.

 

William had been soothed back to sleep, and the sun still lingered near the horizon. The early news predicted a beautiful day, but Mulder had heard that tripe before. The TV weathermen never factored in the Alien Armageddon or Hurricane Scully.

 

"Start talking, Agent Mulder," Dana ordered quietly, as she covered William with the blanket. "What's happening?"

 

Mulder sat in the chair and propped his feet up on the edge of the bed. "Once upon a time there lived a boy named 'Fox' whose sister was taken as part of a conspiracy to resist humanity's enslavement by alien life-"

 

"I've read the files; fast forward to present day. Are you having the same hallucination as Teresa Hoese? Because that's what it sounded like you told her ten minutes ago."

 

"Am I seeing Ray Hoese? No."

 

"But you are having hallucinations. Flashbacks?" she guessed.

 

He shook his head. "They aren't flashbacks."

 

"What are you seeing?"

 

"Who do you think I'm seeing?" he asked.

 

"Your sister?"

 

He shook his head again and pointed at her.

 

"Me?"

 

He nodded.

 

"You're seeing me?" she repeated, and considered for a few seconds. "Are you seeing me in danger? Being abducted?"

 

"No. I told you, it's not a flashback."

 

She came to examine him, running her fingers through his hair to check for injuries, and looked closely at his eyes. "Are you dizzy? Confused? Experiencing any other unusual sensations?"

 

"I kinda gotta pee, and I like it as you lean over and I can see down your sweater."

 

Sounding frustrated, she said, "Teresa Hoese is clearly disturbed, but you're brilliant and idiosyncratic - not clinically insane. I know you don't need me lecturing you on psychology, but you're not sleeping and you're having nightmares. Drinking last night isn’t like you. You're anxious, irritable. You won't talk about anything having to do with your abduction. You know what the math adds up to, and now you're hallucinating. Why are you being so casual about this?"

 

"Idiosyncratic. That's got to be some mad Scrabble points," he quipped.

 

Her brows met at a dangerous angle.

 

He exhaled and said, "I dreamed of you during your abduction. I told you."

 

She nodded.

 

"I can't compare those dreams to anything else I've experienced - and that's saying something. You knew how much I needed your strength, your comfort, to keep going. You knew my desperation and despair in searching for you. You know I felt terrified trying to take care of William alone. In those dreams, what I needed, you gave, and vice versa."

 

He paused and waited for her to say how self-serving he sounded, but Scully said nothing.

 

"During my abduction, you dreamed of me," he continued. "I think the same thing happened. I couldn't bear the horrors happening to me, so I found a bridge in time and space - a dream - and my consciousness went to be with yours. You said you even saw me a few times when you were awake. When the dreams and the visions stopped, you said you knew I'd died. When my dreams of you stopped..." He hesitated, and said, "This isn't so different. Teresa Hoese needs to see Ray, and so he comes to her. This week, I've needed to see you."

 

She folded her arms. "The neuroscience of dreams is still poorly understood - how the brainstem and the frontal lobe interact during REM - but the lucid dreaming you're describing has been scientifically validated. During periods of extreme stress or fatigue, people can have benevolent hallucinations. They can sense a presence or see apparitions of loved ones. Deja-vu, doppelgangers, astral projection: all the paranormal phenomena you adore is merely dopaminergic activity in the mesolimbic pathway.

 

"How about, it's your soul comforting mine?"

 

"My soul is currently in use," she informed him. "How about, it's a hallucination, and I want to know why you didn't tell anyone? They're finding bodies at abduction sites. At your abduction site. Even I looked at the man's corpse yesterday and thought of you. Something about his hands reminded me if yours. Your hands are warm, and it bothered me his were cold. Being in Bellefleur bothers me, yet you keep shrugging and wisecracking while you self-destruct."

 

"You believe in ensoulment," he pointed out. "In the pre- and post-existence of the human soul: the essence of who we are exists before our first breath and after our last. You believe in the mystical hand of God. In the power of prayer. You believe our son was a miracle."

 

"I've seen the doctor's reports-" she started to say.

 

"So have I. I'm not arguing our miracle, just the narrowness with which you want to define it at the moment. What makes us human, Scully? Self-aware? Different from the other animals? What is the spark giving us life and linking us to each other? Where does it come from and where does it go after we die? What is that twenty-one grams?"

 

"First, your 'twenty-one grams' nonsense has no scientific validity-"

 

"If God can touch your soul, heal your body, create a life, and if you can pray for my soul, why can't your soul reach through a wormhole in time and space to comfort mine?"

 

"Because it can't," she said, staring at him in disbelief. "This is what I put up with for eight years? It's like trying to reason with an omniscient, megalomaniacal fog."

 

He grinned at her. "Sexy, isn't it?"

 

"I'm thinking of a different word," she assured him.

 

Her motel room phone range. The sound woke William again and made Scully check the clock and say another one of those bad words.

 

Mulder raised his hands, protesting his innocence. Unless the call came from The Great Beyond - or Great Britain - the caller was not a woman he'd been romantically entangled with recently. And he defined 'recently' as since O.J Simpson's murder trial in LA and the Branch Davidian fiasco in Waco.

 

She rolled her eyes and picked up the receiver. She listened a moment, and promised, "I will tell him."

 

"The deputy accompanied Teresa safely home," Mulder supplied for her. "He checked, and there was indeed a framed portrait of Stella Hoese left on Dr. Nemman's front porch."

 

"Which proves what?" she asked. "She's telling the truth about her hallucinations?"

 

"At least to a point, Teresa was interacting with her reality. Her husband was on her father's porch early this morning, asking Teresa about their daughter. She opened the door and got the picture to show him."

 

"Or she's psychotic," Scully replied scornfully.

 

"If Teresa saw a psychic vampire, he couldn't have entered her house uninvited," Mulder told her as he lay down beside William. "Vampires, ghosts, demons, witches: it's an ancient rule for all of them."

 

"Solely for the sake of argument, and overlooking the invalidity of this 'ancient rule' business you've apparently culled from Bela Lugosi movies and the Sookie Stackhouse novels-"

 

"Agent Reyes says it's the rule on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, too."

 

"If she thought she was talking to her husband, why couldn't Teresa Hoese have said, 'Ray, come upstairs and see Stella'? Wouldn't that have counted as an invitation? I don't see why it's significant to you the facts supporting her actions - her interactions with a hallucination, I might add - are limited to the front porch."

 

"Because it's not her house," Mulder said, and earned an expression so icy it could liquefy nitrogen.

 

"Are you and Scully fighting?" William asked.

 

Mulder raised his head and kissed the delicate pink curve of his son's ear. "No, buddy. Daddy's trying to save the world while Mommy's monologuing 'The Skeptic's Handbook.' Situation normal."

 

"Oh. Okay," William answered, and relaxed again.

 

Mulder moved so William's head fitted neatly beneath his chin as they watched the pretty television newscaster together.

 

Dana stood beside the dresser with her arms crossed. Mulder knew she was re-supplying her mental arsenal of obscure scientific facts and vowel-less big words. As soon as she settled on a strategy, he'd get carpet-bombed with reason, but it would take her a moment.

 

Her flummoxed expression made him grin, but experience made him wise enough to keep his head down. He had her going in circles because he remembered their years as partners and she didn't. If she'd stop debating the paranormal and hold his feet to the fire of science, he'd be in her arena. She'd combine those degrees in physics and medicine with her 800 Verbal SAT score and linguistically kick his ass in no time. His only defense would be to ditch her or kiss her.

 

He'd tell her, but it might be seen as treating her like a child.

 

"Paternal," he said aloud.

 

"What?"

 

"Paternal," Mulder repeated, and added, "The crime scenes: they remind me of children who were victims of their parents," he said. He chose his words carefully since William was listening. "He feels paternal."

 

She nodded, understanding.

 

Parents who killed their own children - in a fit of rage, to cover up abuse, and even while psychotic - placed the child's body someplace safe and covered it with a blanket, as if the child slept. Sometimes they dressed the child or left a stuffed animal or favorite toy. Serial killers or pedophiles kidnapped children and dumped the body, but a child's corpse found wrapped in a warm blanket and tucked someplace safe... Some part of a parent's brain still acted on an instinct to protect their child, even if they'd murdered it.

 

"He peacefully turned off their life," he said to himself. "Whatever did - he also cared for them. He tried to watch over them, even to help them as best as he could."

 

"He didn't care enough for them to let them remain alive," Scully argued.

 

"A valid point," he agreed. "A god or a demigod would think of humans as their children. As would an angel. A genetic mutant. Any superior being."

 

"Your benevolent psychic vampire is also a mutant demigod?"

 

"No," Mulder said in false disgust. "That will never fit on a tab in the filing cabinet. 'Preternatural fortuitousness' barely fits in tiny little type."

 

"You couldn't have labeled it 'oddly lucky'?"

 

"I could have. You labeled it, Scully."

 

He heard a frustrated sigh.

 

"Are you fighting now?" William piped up.

 

"No, we're bantering." Mulder rolled over and sat up. He gave her his most impish grin. "You want to go solve a case together, Agent Scully?"

 

"I'm no longer Agent Scully." She leaned back against the dresser.

 

"Sure, you are."

 

"I was thinking more of driving to the airport and getting on a plane so our son can attend school one day this week, and I can do what the Bureau pays me to do-"

 

"Be head counselor at Camp Notta-A-Lotta Fun?" Mulder asked.

 

"And I would like for you to come with me," she continued. "You're worrying me, Mulder."

 

"One last time," he urged. "First time, last time, so you can say you remember it. You want to keep an eye on me, and you have the rest of your life to teach new agents the Y-incision and to look everywhere for track marks."

 

She still had her arms crossed but, as usual, her resolve started to fade like the morning mist.

 

"Let's go figure out what happened to these people, and why their bodies are at abduction sites. Try to stop a benevolent, psychic, demigod vampire - or something to better fit on a file tab. We might even save the world."

 

"Okay," she acquiesced.

 

"Except the world's gotta wait while I pee," he said, and headed for the bathroom.

 

"My hero," she called after him.

 

****

 

The marquee of the local Baptist church listed the services for the first Bellefleur victim at 10 AM, and the second victim at 4 PM.

 

A few news crews gathered near the morgue, but most had set up shop on the sidewalk outside the sheriff's office. The SAC stood in front of the reporters' cameras, at the center of a feeding frenzy, but holding his own as Mulder drove past.

 

No SAC or Assistant Director wanted to admit to the reporter's microphones the FBI didn't know. While the man in front of the cameras hedged and repeated pat phrases, agents got sent out to re-interview the families and re-check the crime scenes. Visit their homes and workplaces, talk to their friends and co-workers. Find a clue, find a connection. Records came in by the box load and gigabyte, and were painstakingly reviewed, line by line. In the deputies' headquarters, all the agents bent over stacks of papers or laptops, following the order to "find something."

 

Their heads popped up as Mulder entered, and six sets of eyes followed him. It felt heavy: the weight of those desperate looks. Profiling became less a job, more a personal mission as small towns started burying their dead.

 

"I assured CNN the FBI has our lead profiler on this case, along with a top forensic pathologist from Quantico and a team of our best hung-over, sleep-deprived, romantically entangled agents," SAC Boyle told Mulder and Scully after the briefing, as he returned inside. He ran his fingers through his short hair tiredly. "Is there anything else I can tell them? Or tell my agents?"

 

Oblivious to the tension in the room, William neatly dissected Mulder's phone from his father's pocket and headed for the old orange couch. Dana had filled William's Mickey backpack with healthy snacks and schoolwork and educational toys and library books. William used his backpack as a pillow while he played Pong on the iPhone.

 

"You mean like who, what, where, why and how?" Mulder asked.

 

The SAC nodded. "Yeah, something useful along those lines."

 

"Seven is the magic number," Mulder said.

 

"There won't be any more killings in Bellefleur? You're sure?"

 

"It might be the one thing I'm sure of." He looked at the weary agents again and added, "Give me a few hours."

 

It was barely eight AM, but the desk assigned to Mulder had stacks of reports on it. He saw transcripts of interviews and information about the victims that had come in since yesterday. Reports on trace evidence, including fibers and DNA collected from the sixth victim's dog and from each victim. Soil from their shoes and analyses of their hair. There were copies of Scully's preliminary autopsy reports, and, a moment later, a cup of coffee courtesy of her.

 

Along with a second steaming Styrofoam cup and her laptop, she held a thick fax from Quantico.

 

"Nothing, is there?" he said over his coffee cup, looking up at her from the old desk chair. That's what his loaner desk held: a big, scientific pile of nothing.

 

"Nothing so far," she corrected. "I'm waiting on the histo-pathologies and multiple toxicology reports."

 

"Those tissue samples are going to tell you their hearts stopped. If they tell you why they stopped, you - Dana Scully - will have found evidence of God."

 

"I'd settle for finding a massive overdose of caffeine. A lethal injection of insulin into the navel. Something like potassium chloride. Succinylcholine," she said. "Digitalis - it's an easy one to put in food. Ricin toxicity; as few as eight castor beans can be fatal. Exposure to smoke from burning cerbera odollam, the Indian suicide tree."

 

"Dr. Scully, remind me never to piss you off."

 

"Why?" she asked, but he couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not as she blinked those blue eyes at him.

 

He thumbed through the first stack of reports while covertly watching her review the lab results.

 

As soon as they solved this case, they could go home. Go on. Figure out what came next and who got which shelf in the medicine cabinet. See if she might be agreeable to being one of those conventional families where everyone lived together and had the same last name.

 

He didn't think the last name thing would fly. He'd end up being Mr. Dr. Scully before Dana become Mrs. Special Agent Mulder. Those little rebellions were important to her: shunning big box stores, parking where her FBI permit let her, getting a tattoo, sleeping with men who were bad for her. Scully liked to show the world she was in control and she had fire beneath that cool exterior.

 

On impulse, he got up and, ten years after her initial request, offered the battered office chair to her. "Here. You have the computer; you get the desk."

 

"Thank you," she said easily, sitting down. "Where are you going to work?"

 

"I'll improvise."

 

Mulder carried one of the VFW's metal chairs over and unfolded it so he sat across from her.

 

"Let's see how it goes if we do it this way."

 

She opened her laptop, turned to check on William, and took a sip from her coffee cup. "I'm afraid to ask, but how did it go when we did it some other way?"

 

"Remember how you said I’m remarkably myopic?"

 

"That badly?"

 

****

 

Freshly shaved and wearing a suit and tie, Agent Doggett's face appeared on the screen of Scully's laptop. Over the little speakers, his voice said, "Agent Mulder, Agent Scully. Good morning." He grinned and added, "Like old times."

 

Mulder expected Agent Reyes, but Doggett sat behind the desk in the X-files office, starched and pressed at 7:30 AM on the East Coast. When William was two-going-on-three, Mulder made it to work twenty minutes late, with jelly on his tie, and wadded tissues and something made by Fisher-Price in his pocket. Agent Doggett looking ready for a dress inspection meant another reason for Mulder to dislike him.

 

"Hello, Will," Doggett said.

 

William must have hoped for Agent Reyes too - or at least her breast - because, on Mulder's lap and without looking up from Mulder's phone, William waved one hand and mumbled, "Hello, Mr. Doggett."

 

"Monica wants me to tell you-" Doggett looked down at his notes and read stiltedly, "The ancient Sumerians and Babylonians spoke of the Anunnaki, which were a group of deities who came to Earth possessing great knowledge of the stars and who could fly in their aircrafts. These beings are described as not being truly alive but appearing so." He looked up. "She's on her way to the office, but I hope this makes some sense to you, Mulder."

 

"Ancient astronauts," Mulder told the webcam. "Alien beings visiting prehistoric Earth. Their advanced technology and culture is the basis for many world religions. The Nazca lines, the Giza pyramids, Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, Tikal: all have been attributed to an alien mother culture. Panspermia. Aliens are depicted in prehistoric drawings and carvings."

 

Agent Doggett nodded as if he might have heard of that, but before he could speak, Scully informed them, "That's completely untrue. There's no scientific evidence to support any of that."

 

"Carl Sagan felt panspermia was possible," Mulder reminded her. "The Bible refers to the aliens as children of fallen angels. They're called 'the watchers' who rebelled against Heaven in the Gnostic gospels. What is Genesis except an account of an ancient alien being creating life in the void? It's the definition of panspermia. Scully, are you rewriting Carl Sagan and God?"

 

"Yep. Like old times," Doggett repeated.

 

Scully didn't answer at all.

 

"I'm also supposed to tell you the-" Agent Doggett consulted his notes again. "The Pacific Coast Athabaskan language of the indigenous people of Oregon - which is extinct - was related to the Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi tribe of Oraibi, Arizona. Agent Scully, this reads like something you'd write."

 

"Navajo is a Southern Athabaskan language," Scully said. "Aztec is Uto-Aztecan. Linguists have tried to trace the migration of indigenous peoples across the Bering Strait and down the Americas through the evolution and commonalities between their languages. There are cultures thousands of miles apart speaking languages with common roots, yet Hopi and Navajo - in close proximity - are highly dissimilar. The linguistic links and divergences can also indicate established trade routes or lost cultures. The Incans were said to speak a secret language different from the Proto-Quechua languages around them, yet modern linguists have no idea what that language was or why the Inca would have spoken it."

 

Mulder leaned sideways, as if retrieving something from the next desk. Out of view of the webcam, he mouthed at her, "Way hotter than Ayden J's mommies."

 

He put his arm around William and told Agent Doggett, "So Agent Reyes believes this could be an ancient alien - the basis for one of the seven Sumerian and Babylonian gods - that's been hop-scotching around the Americas since prehistoric times?"

 

"Agent Reyes believes a lot of things, Mulder," Doggett responded in the same skeptical tone Scully was so fond of. "I can tell you she was on the telephone most of yesterday, trying to get information about abductions among the Oraibi, and she didn't get far. Not even talking to the local P.D. It was like talking to one of those UFO cults, which tells me they got something to hide."

 

"And like talking to the good people of Bellefleur in 1992," Mulder said. He glanced down and nodded in approval as William showed him the phone's screen. They'd instituted an 'ask before downloading' rule. "Medicine wheels would be common to both cultures," he continued. "How closely is Mayan related to the Hopi dialect?"

 

The seventh Mayan glyph kept floating to the front of Mulder's mind.  Seven bodies in a circle, one circle every year until the colonists returned in 2012 - a date signaling creation and the end of the world.

 

"I'll ask her to check and get back with you," Doggett promised.

 

William slid down. He took the phone with him and headed for the front of the little building.

 

"Agent Mulder believes the killer feels parental toward his victims," Scully told the computer screen as Mulder looked back at the camera. "Protective."

 

"That doesn't make any sense. Parents kill in fits of rage or to hide abuse. If a child becomes inconvenient or the parent becomes insane," Doggett argued. "Nothing you've sent us suggests that's what's happening here."

 

"That's what I told him," her voice answered, but Mulder was watching William again.

 

His son had enlisted the longsuffering Mrs. Bahe as an accomplice. Mulder's phone, with the screen alternating between bright white and black, sat propped up against a plant on the sill of the front window. William and the secretary conferred, and she got a candle from her desk. She lit it, and helped William, carefully, carry it to the window and place it beside the flashing phone.

 

Mulder got up. He forgot about the video conference call and instead focused on William and the flickering little candle.

 

The British were coming, and a second lamp in the belfry burned.

 

William's imagination could be cause for concern when Daddy had made a few trips to the nut hut and God spoke to Mommy sometimes, but at least the boy was never bored. To William, the British ships arrived and were set upon by pirate patriots. Keira Knightly, Legalos, and Willy Wonka defended the colonies, alongside Paul Revere and George Washington.

 

Probably because William watched it from six inches away and sucked up all the oxygen, the candle guttered out. Mrs. Bahe relit it, making sure to send the correct signal.

 

One if by land, two if by sea.

 

Seven if by UFO.

 

The ships weren't coming; the ships were coming back. The colonists had visited the colonies plenty of times before.

 

Mulder rolled his left shoulder. The scar had ached on Monday, and on and off since February. Stephanie's sports medicine guy said Mulder tensed the muscles as he ran, and Scully said the same thing. Stretch more, relax, and put heat on it. Alternatively, get a different job, a different destiny, and be twenty-six again.

 

There hadn't been a twinge since he'd left the forest Tuesday.

 

Take the weight, the power, the voltage, the light - whatever - of seven human souls, arrange them in a mathematical anomaly, and switch them off. It had to be a noticeable beacon. Not an invitation, though. He didn't know the invasion date, but he knew it was set. This constituted either a 'circle the wagons' or a 'get me the hell out of Dodge' signal. Either way, Mulder knew who'd sent it.

 

"Mulder," Scully said from behind him, sounding annoyed.

 

"I'm guessin' we're done here," Agent Doggett's voice said slowly, over the computer speakers. "Agent Mulder?"

 

Mulder glanced back. Agent Doggett's computer image looked perplexed, and Scully had the expression she got if someone mentioned cold fusion or psychic surgery.

 

"It looks like it," she said unhappily.

 

Once the web camera was off, Scully walked toward him. "I'm sensing you've had an epiphany. Or developed a seizure disorder. Is our suspect an ancient Babylonian space vampire?"

 

"Sumerian, not Babylonian, Scully. Big difference."

 

She leaned against a desk and deadpanned in perfect Bill Murray style, "I think we'd better split up. We can do more damage that way."

 

"Way hotter than either of Ayden J's mommies," he repeated, and asked, "Scully, remember how you said this wasn't a psychic vampire?"

 

"Yes," she agreed hesitantly.

 

"You were completely right. It's not vampirism at all."

 

"Thank God," she said, sounding relieved.

 

"It's an alien."

 

"Please tell me you mean 'alien' in the 'doesn't have a green card' sense of the word."

 

"An ancient alien astronaut. Or the last surviving clone of the original ancient alien astronaut. You don't get spaceships buried under a hundred feet of ice at the South Pole unless they were there before the great flood." Mulder picked up his car keys. "I'm going to go question my suspect."

 

"You're going to go what?"

 

****

 

"Parents of the year. Is there a ceremony we attend or do they mail the award to us?" Scully asked as she rode shotgun in Mulder's rental Taurus on the way out of lovely downtown Bellefleur.

 

They'd left William at the sheriffs' headquarters, happily eating a jelly doughnut, watching for Redcoats, and playing with fire. Mrs. Bahe volunteered to supervise him, and she'd shown William the secret candy drawer in her desk. Thanks to Uncles Frohike and Langly, William knew how to watch "Stargate" in a series of five-minute clips on You-Tube, much to his mother's chagrin. Agent Martelli had promised to teach him how to battle with a double-bladed light saber like the Sith Lords, or as Martelli put it, "throw down old-school, Brooklyn-Jedi style."

 

If the aliens didn't destroy Earth, Mulder thought the next generation of FBI Agents might.

 

"The chub scout is fine. I lived on Twinkies, hot dogs, soda, and 'Star Trek' - and no parental supervision - for months at a time as a teenager," Mulder assured her.

 

"That's not a ringing endorsement."

 

"They let me into Oxford."

 

"You, twelve saints, Bill Clinton, and Hugh Grant: there's always the outlier," she countered, but said seriously, "What are we doing, Mulder? Tell me... something. Convince me something rational is happening inside your head, because I'm considering having you committed."

 

"Jeremiah Smith."

 

It took her a moment before she recited, "The alleged shape-shifting healer? One of five men you believed to be clones working against the consortium? You think this killer is the demigod Michael Lee Milton of the Church of the 13th Sign believed himself to be?"

 

"Except this is the real deal. Your own reports indicate you witnessed Teresa Hoese's healing, and believed a Jeremiah Smith attempted to find and heal my body in Montana before he was abducted by a UFO."

 

"Heal," She stipulated. "My report indicated I believed Jeremiah Smith healed victims, not killed them. A rather significant difference."

 

"Not really," he said dismissively.

 

"We're driving into the forest on a quest to question the real Ophiuchus?"

 

"It's likely the Ophiuchus healer legend is based on the original Jeremiah Smith, as other ancient peoples tried to explain their contact with aliens through religion. Traveling to and from Heaven, Gods intermingling their genetics with humans, the great flood, and a select group of humans saved from a coming apocalypse by fire: those themes aren't unique to Catholic mythology, Scully."

 

She'd folded her arms across her chest about the time he said "through religion," and her body language became increasingly defensive.

 

"I'm trying not to be offended, here," she insisted, though she didn't seem to be trying hard.

 

"I'm not trying to offend you. I'm pointing out there are commonalities to most world religions, and I'm not the first person to notice. How did all those cultures, with no contact between them, develop similar beliefs sets?"

 

She raised her eyebrows. "Because those beliefs are based on fact. On a divine creator God."

 

"Exactly," he answered. "Divine creator gods in a spaceship. Gray gods with Black Oil and an ancient language and symbols and plans to come back and colonize the planet one day in the near future. To fight back, our government has colluded with these aliens while secretly kidnapping and experimenting on its citizens for decades. They've taken you, taken me, tampered with your pregnancy - trying to create a vaccine or a hybrid or a child immune to the alien virus."

 

She re-folded her arms across her chest, and a chilly silence descended on the car. Those little rebellions of hers - for the moment, one of them was not shunning Catholicism.

 

He'd never understood how she could reconcile heavenly apparitions, but not run-of-the-mill ghosts or omens. Dana believed in divine incarnation, but not an extra-terrestrial being assuming the form of a man. If Mulder mentioned something paranormal, she dismissed it as paranoia or shell-shock. She believed in everything except him and what he'd spent fifteen years working to accomplish. She'd seen ghosts and aliens and a plethora of paranormal with her own eyes, even if she didn’t remember them.

 

He heard an unhappy sigh from the passenger seat, indicating she felt an apology was in order.

 

"You asked me about my profile," he reminded her. "I was answering your question. Yes, our suspect is an ancient healer or a clone of the healer. I'm sorry if I sounded glib."

 

"No, you're not," she shot back.

 

It was his turn to sigh.

 

They reached the outskirts of town, and he put his foot down on the gas pedal. The tall trees blurred past on either side of the road.

 

"To someone who doesn't understand it, science and advanced technology appears magical, as what FBI profilers do seems like mind-reading," she said a few miles later. "What you can do seems doubly so, Mulder. It makes people feel like they're naked before you, but it isn't magical. It's a brilliant mind correlating good observations and probability theory and sometimes a big leap of faith, but it's based on facts. Do you have one fact to support this theory of yours?"

 

Mulder reached across his chest and offered his bandaged left hand to her. "I cut it open falling on a rock and got blood on my slacks, but it wasn't bleeding as I came out of the woods. It had partially healed. The doctor had to cut to get the dirt out and put in stitches."

 

"The wound began to clot," she supplied.

 

"No, I saw what I thought was you in the forest, you touched me, and my hand began to heal. But I told you to stop, and the healing stopped. How else do you explain crud being buried beneath enough skin to require a scalpel and four stitches?"

 

"The angle of the fall. A projectile can penetrate-"

 

"You saw the wound, Doubting Thomas," he said, interrupting her.

 

"Glib," she reminded him. "What do you mean you saw what you thought was me? I thought your soul saw mine?"

 

"Sometimes it is," he assured her as he drove. "I'm sure of that. But sometimes it's the same thing Teresa Hoese saw. It's an ancient alien creature who cares for and wants to heal humans, but it doesn't understand us. Jeremiah Smith is immortal; that's how his mind works. If I accidentally killed William's class hamster, why wouldn't I replace it without him knowing? I'm his father, I don't want him to be upset, and he'd never know the difference. That's all Smith's doing. He's trying to help."

 

"He's trying to help by killing fourteen people?" she demanded.

 

"Well, I don't know if he's killing them permanently - but yes: what I saw in the forest is the same creature who turned off our victim's lives. Created a mathematical anomaly. Sent a signal."

 

"Mulder, you're acting insane."

 

"No, I'm not," he assured her. "I've let people drill holes in my skull and shoot me full of hallucinogens. I've slept with an honest-to-goodness vampire. I've been on a ship captured by Nazis in 1939, done couples counseling with the ghosts of Christmas past, and once accidentally had a female genie wipe out the entire population of the planet for a few minutes. Accidentally," he repeated for emphasis. "Trust me, this is not me acting insane."

 

"I want you to stop the car," she insisted. "Stop the car and listen to me. This is PTSD. You're hallucinating. This is exactly what Deputy Director Skinner and Monica worried would happen if you came back here. The Deputy Director didn't want to send you, but there was no one else."

 

He didn't stop the car, but he lightened his foot so the speedometer dropped to a more reasonable speed.

 

"There's no mythical alien in the forest," she continued. "At most, there's a serial killer mimicking one and using some toxin I haven't yet found. If you want to go back to the place where you were abducted, we'll go. I'll go with you. But all you're going to find is a clearing. You're not going to find some ancient healer and you're not going to find me. You didn't see my soul in the forest. I am right here. The same relentlessness you had with finding your sister, now it's with finding me. Her. Your old partner. Except I am your old partner."

 

He swallowed. "Is that why you came to Oregon with me? Because Skinner told you to?"

 

Special Agent Mulder, please report to the Department of Wishful Thinking in the land of Let's Pretend. Agent Scully will be waiting.

 

"No one told me to. I came to Oregon with you because innocent people are dying here-"

 

"Innocent people are dying everywhere," he snapped. "I have a backlog of monsters. I have psychotics and psychopaths and pedophiles and a guy on Rhode Island who preserves dead preschoolers' bodies and has tea with them every day at four."

 

"Mulder-" she started soothingly.

 

"What? This is my job, and you've never volunteered to come along before. The first question of profiling is why here, why now? What is it you want?"

 

"I want you to pull over and stop the car," she repeated. "I want you to listen to me."

 

"I am listening to you. So, I'm to understand this is charity work, Saint Scully, rather than official FBI business?"

 

"What are you talking about?"

 

Mulder felt his stomach tightening and his face getting hot. "My money was on you coming back to Bellefleur to try to remember. Those daddy issues are like my father's blue-chip stocks: always a good bet. But you're right; sometimes I am way off the mark."

 

She stared at him with her mouth open.

 

"Everything? All of it?" he asked. "From the moment Skinner called me at Disney? Everything?"

 

"Everything what?"

 

"You. Me. Here. Last night. The night before. The night before that - sex like that deserves a page in the history books. Were you just making it better?"

 

"Of course, I'm trying to make it better, Mulder," she said, her voice getting loud. "I came with you because innocent people are dying, and because being here is like going back to the mouth of Hell for you. That's what you told me last night. You never talk about your abduction. I don't know if you think I'm too fragile or I won't understand or you can't talk about it, but... You weren't the only one who came back to a child and a life you didn't anticipate. You told me years ago you wanted me to have the time to heal you didn't get. You gave me time, but I can see your scars, Mulder. I've heard you have nightmares. You still have them. In February, at my apartment, and this week: you're still having nightmares."

 

"How does this justify you inviting me back into your bed? Now or in February? How does that add up?" he yelled back. "I have never been dishonest with you, and when it comes to us, that's all you've ever been with me. You want facts? Here's a fact: friends do not fuck it better."

 

He teetered close to an adolescent "you said you loved me" tirade, so he gritted his teeth and kept his mouth shut. If he'd known the sex was on the barter system, she could have skipped the dancing and the pillow talk about love and another baby - and he could have skipped making sure she came.

 

His knuckles looked blotchy-white on the steering wheel and he felt her eyes boring into him.

 

"You think that's what I'm doing?" she said coolly.

 

"It's what you said you were doing," he answered tightly.

 

"Is that easier for you to believe than it being real? You're going to make sure you push me away before I can hurt you or leave you?"

 

"Do not play head games with the head spook of the spooky services unit," he warned. "You think you feel naked before me now? I know you better than you know you."

 

"So that's a 'yes'?" she asked, and he refused to answer her.

 

****

 

The drive to the forest was shorter with Agents Smithson and Martelli flirting. Even with Skinner grumping in the passenger seat seven years ago, it hadn't been so long a trip. As Mulder silently tried not to throttle the love of his life, the distance from downtown Bellefleur to the mouth of Hell distorted the space-time continuum.

 

He parked at the trail head, got out of the car, slammed the door, and started down the familiar path without checking whether Scully was following him or not. As pissed off as he was - and as she was - Mulder knew she'd be behind him. He knew her, and he knew she wouldn't let him go alone.

 

He walked quickly enough she had to trot to keep up, to show he didn't need her.

 

He thought of what she'd said about him leaving people before they could leave him, and he slowed down. Not enough to be a comfortable pace for her, but enough he didn't leave her a hundred yards behind.

 

He felt it as he neared the clearing: the pull of the forest. He felt part of all things at once. The sensation flowed through him and around him like a living, breathing thing, as vivid as it was frightening.

 

He wanted to ask Dana if she felt it, but he wasn't speaking to her. How charitable of her, he repeated to himself, though he knew she didn't remember the awful first time they had sex, and therefore didn't know why he was so angry.

 

"Yes, I want to have another child," she announced out of the blue.

 

Mulder halted at the edge of the clearing. In a movie soundtrack, a Mahler symphony would have played with dum-da-dum-dum kettle drums followed by frantic violins.

 

Birds didn't even chirp.

 

"You what?" he said, turning back to stare at her.

 

The forest behind her was cool and shadowy, and became surreally still.

 

"I want to have another child," she repeated as she caught her breath. Her face had flushed, and her hair curled in the damp woods. She looked tousled and ethereally imperfect and, as furious as he felt, she still made his breath catch in his throat.

 

"Why didn't you say so?" he demanded.

 

"No, Mulder. I told you there are no ova. I'll have to use donor ova and do in vitro. It’s thirty-thousand dollars for the ova, plus ten thousand or more for every IVF attempt."

 

"You've checked this out?" She sounded like she'd checked it out if she could quote the price list to him.

 

"I'm a medical doctor. Don't forget, I'm not twenty-eight anymore, either; the success rate plummets as women age. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I, I, I can't do that."

 

Still restless, he ran his fingers through his hair, and shrugged. He had Bill Mulder's blood money, and aside from funding William's education and iTunes budget, Mulder didn't know what he planned to do with it.

 

"I told you I don't care about the cost, but if we're going to have another baby, I, I want to get married. Live together. Something. I... You said we were good together; I think we still are good together." He stopped, realizing how practical and ineloquent and hopelessly unromantic he sounded. "In case the message got missed in the bathroom counter melee the other night."

 

She took his hand. Her palm felt warm and moist and small against his, but something he couldn't put a finger on felt wrong.

 

"Mulder, I do want a child. For me. I love Will, and I want another child like him. Your intellect, your passion, your courage. I want you to donate, but..."

 

She looked away, focusing on a random tree instead of him.

 

"But you want me to do it anonymously," he finished for her.

 

Scully studied the tree and nodded.

 

In his imaginary soundtrack, the violins worked themselves into a frenzy again.

 

Mulder's stomach started to quake. "You want me to pay for you to conceive a child I would watch you raise and I would have no right to?" he asked slowly, trying to keep his voice from breaking. Most things sounded less awful out loud, but this sounded worse.

 

"You'd be there as my friend, and if we needed you," she said quickly. "You're Will's father."

 

"I'd be this baby's father, too." He let go of her hand and shook his head. "God, Scully - I don't know if I can."

 

"You can," she urged. "Mulder, don't say 'no.'"

 

He put his hands on his hips. "What am I supposed to tell this child? Or William? I take one kid to watch the World Series, and not the other? One child goes to visit my aunts in Boston, but not the other? That's despicable. What if something would happen to you again? Have you thought about that? I could back-peddle on establishing paternity with William, but I can't do that with in vitro. Not in your scenario. And I know it's selfish, but I don't want to watch you on the roller coaster every month. It's horrible. Every time it doesn't work, it's horrible, and there's never a damn thing I can do about it."

 

She opened her mouth, but he cut her off.

 

"Don't promise me it won't be like that because you don't remember. I wanted to buy you a baby from China or Russia and get you to stop those doctor's appointments."

 

"Mulder-" was all she had time to say as he paused for breath.

 

"I can't promise someone won't try to tamper with this pregnancy, too," he continued, his words tumbling like storm clouds. "I want to think I stopped their work, but I don't have proof. I can't promise I'll be able to keep you safe. If this child turns out to be their messiah, I can't promise to keep it safe, either - not and remain Mr. Hand's Off Anonymous. You aren't my partner anymore, you aren't my lover anymore, but if I'm protecting your hypothetical child with my life, obviously your child is my child. The super-soldiers are going to realize that. They're invincible; they're not stupid. But if I do nothing to protect you and Little Hypothetical... Scully, baby, this is a terrible idea."

 

"Mulder, don't say 'no.'"

 

"What are you thinking?" he asked. "If you want-" He started to tell her to pick some other guy but he didn't like that scenario either. "God, Scully." He glanced up at the cloudless blue sky. "Are you sure it's what you want? You and I might qualify as a romantic Superfund site, but I think we do okay with William."

 

"Of course, I want my child to know who his or her father is. Eventually. Once she's old enough to understand. Not on paper, but if she would ever need a kidney or bone marrow..."

 

She still looked up at him with those hopeful blue eyes, but a little bullshit detector, precisely calibrated after a decade and a half, began to chime in the depths of his brain.

 

"How about a college fund while I'm at it?" he offered sarcastically.

 

"Or that." As if realizing the jig was up, her demeanor changed. "My final in vitro attempt - I paid for it in cash, according to the clinic's records. I'd borrowed from my retirement savings and paid for the previous IVF attempts by check, but the final one... There was one more frozen embryo, and I paid the clinic in cash. I checked my old bank records. I didn't withdraw that much cash from anywhere."

 

"The in vitro fairy donated it."

 

"I think it came from you," she said. "Untraceably, I bet. After watching me on a roller coaster for months, using your genetics to try to conceive a child you didn't want. You paid for me to try one last time, even though I'm sure I told you implanting a single embryo in a woman my age, with the technology at the time, was futile."

 

"So Dana, you're thinking of transferring to the FBI's forensic accounting department?" he quipped. "It was a long time ago, and God knows what the doctor did - if he did anything at all. Do you have a point or is the point still 'screw with Mulder'?"

 

"If I wanted a child - and I'm not saying I don't want another child with you, Mulder - but if I wanted one with the ludicrous constraints I set forth, you'd agree."

 

He started to protest he wouldn't have but stopped as she took his bandaged hand again. He'd have been lying, anyway.

 

Jesus Christ, there should be some charity telethon for people as screwed up as they were. Like "We are the World" but for romantically entangled, middle-aged alien abductee, former partners.

 

"Some of the things I've read about you doing for me, I can't fathom," she continued. "Going to Antarctica to rescue me after I was stung by a viral bee? I still think that's a typo. Our files are about alien abductions and demons and genetic mutants and things defying scientific explanation. But you paying for me to try IVF one last time, even if it was the last thing you wanted? That's the man I know. That's the man I woke up to. You'd walk through fire for me, so don't think there's anything I wouldn't do for you."

 

He considered a few seconds. "Including going to bed with me if I'm having a bad day?"

 

"Mulder... I'm a grown woman. It might lack definition and long-term planning, but don't suggest I'm not acting of my own volition. When I say I love you, don't dismiss it as me not knowing what I'm talking about or who I'm loving."

 

"I’d be treating you like a child."

 

She tapped her nose with her forefinger.

 

"Let's go back to Bellefleur, Mulder. Get Will. Let you get some sleep while I make airline reservations. There's nothing else we can offer to this investigation, and there's nothing in this forest. I want to look at your hand again. I'm wondering if you have a low-grade fever affecting your judgment. Once we get home, I want you to talk with the bureau psychiatrist. Really talk to him, not B.S. him. I think it will help. Will you?"

 

"Scully," he said as something moved in his peripheral vision.

 

He turned his head, watching it.

 

"What?" she said, still holding his hand.

 

"I want you to meet my sister. Will you?"

 

"Your sister's dead."

 

"I find that unusual about this situation, as well," he agreed as he turned.

 

A young woman with long, dark hair stood on the other side of the clearing, her clothing and uncomfortable demeanor similar to Teresa Hoese's. Everything else about her seemed to flinch, but her face glowed as if she'd waited years to see him.

 

Instead of his heart leaping, his molars clinched.

 

"You aren't helping us," Mulder told it. "I know you've seen us taken and tortured - even killed - but pretending to be the people we've loved and lost doesn't help us heal or make us feel better. It holds us back. Humans need to grieve, to move on."

 

Scully looked back and forth between Mulder and the shape-shifter. He'd shown her photographs of Samantha, but as a little girl; she would have no idea what Sam might look like as an adult.

 

The shape-shifter's smile dimmed. "Fox, you have to help me," it said in his sister's voice.

 

"I'll help you, but I'm not going to let you kill innocent people. They have families, friends. Even if you resurrect them, you can't replace the time they've missed. The lives you give back to them, they're nightmarish. Humans aren't supposed to come back from the dead. This isn't a victimless crime, and you cannot play God."

 

"I want to go home, Fox."

 

"You'll have to find some other way to send a signal. You need an intersection of ley lines and I know where those are. You need a site where an ancient civilization existed, and I know where those are. If I don't stop you this year, next May, we'll be waiting for you."

 

"Where will I be next year?"

 

"Kansas," he guessed. "Chichen Itza? Stonehenge? It doesn't matter. The FBI will have all the bases covered, and as soon as your first victim shows up, we'll loose the dogs."

 

The shape-shifter smiled, and it wasn't Sam's smile.

 

A wet chill trickled down Mulder's spine. Every Jeremiah Smith he'd ever seen was completely convincing as the person it impersonated. The movements, the facial expressions, even the texture of the hair and scent of the skin: they were all perfect.

 

He had seen another creature who could shape-shift and tended to be less precise. He'd also encountered unstoppable killing machines who looked like the people they used to be. Those machines had come for Scully and Her Baby before.

 

Please don't let her be pregnant, if I die, was his first thought.

 

His second thought was: please let it be the bounty hunter, and not a super-soldier who used to be Sam. After this long battling with monsters, Mulder took his little victories where he could get them.

 

He felt the same odd sense of calm he had six years ago, at the Omega Center. A switch flicked from 'rational human' to 'no more,' and he'd rather die than let this monster take him. Or take Scully again. Or take William. Or one more human being.

 

He was so tired of being afraid of what lay behind the stars.

 

"Dana, get out of here," he said in a low voice as he un-holstered his service weapon and handed it back to her.

 

He felt the weight of the SIG leave his hand as she took it.

 

"Mulder, what are you doing?" she asked with trepidation.

 

"Get to William. Keep him safe," he ordered. "Call Skinner and tell him what I told you, even the parts you think are crazy. He'll know what to do."

 

He bent down, getting the Walther pistol out of his ankle holster without taking his eyes off the shape-shifter.

 

"I'm not leaving the clearing, so if anything comes after you, it's not me," he continued. "My plan is he isn't leaving either, but in case it doesn't work out... No matter who it looks like, shoot it in the back of the neck and get away. Don't miss. Run," he said.

 

He knew Scully thought PTSD or a death wish had kicked in. However, dying was the thing he wanted least to do. He felt tired, and he wanted to go home. To live. Earn a woman's soft hands and strong love. Have another baby, maybe, or at least have fun trying. Have a beer after their son's baseball game. See how things turned out on "Battlestar Galactica," run the race to raise money for breast cancer research and try to save the world. He felt the life force flowing in the clearing, and he wanted to be part of it.

 

Dana didn't move, so he barked, "Run!"

 

"Mulder, whoever she is, I have her."

 

"It isn't a 'her,' Scully," he insisted, keeping his pistol trained on the alien. "If he's a bounty hunter, I can't kill him from this angle; I can only wound him. If he's a super-soldier, I can't do more than slow him down. If he wanted me to bring you to an abduction site or to him, I've done it. Run!"

 

He heard her take a step back, and two, but she stopped.

 

"Run!" he yelled at her again. "Get to a phone and call Skinner."

 

"Lower your weapon," Dana yelled back. "She's unarmed. Mulder, lower you weapon and hand it back to me. Listen to me! Your judgment is impaired. Don't do this!"

 

The creature's face changed, morphing from Samantha Mulder into Melissa Scully.

 

"Dana," it had time to say in Melissa's voice, before Mulder took two rapid steps forward and fired three shots into the base of its throat. He hoped to get lucky and get a bullet to go all the way through.

 

The peppery smell of gunpowder assaulted his mouth and nose. He heard Scully screaming at him, pleading for him to stop shooting.

 

Bounty hunter, he thought, relieved as it started to bleed green. A bounty hunter he could slow down enough for Scully to get away, and she'd treated him for exposure to its toxic blood before. He hoped she'd written down the miracle recipe.

 

The creature's face changed again, and this time it impersonated Scully. His Scully. The one he'd danced with in the Mystic Pizza Hut and kissed on New Year’s Eve and told they had all the time in the world.

 

He put another few bullets into its throat before it could speak. He believed in freedom of expression - it could be anyone else it wanted, but it couldn't be his Scully.

 

His eyes and lungs burned, and he squinted, trying to see. Mulder felt strong hands grab the front of his shirt. He was weightless, like he had been as the ship took him years ago.

 

And God turned off his life.

 

****


	5. Chapter 5

7 Days in May

 

****

 

Day 5: Do shape-shifters dream of electric sheep?

 

****

 

2:15 PM

 

If Mother Nature got really pissed off, the meteorological order of operations was: rain, freezing rain, a sudden drop in temperature, and a shit-storm of heavy snow.

 

Mulder checked the gas gauge as he pulled out of the crowded school parking lot. Four-wheel drive meant the new Grand Cherokee went through gasoline at a rate making OPEC cheer and Al Gore blanche. Mulder had the heater on high, the headlights on low, and the wipers going at top speed, trying to see. Despite being February, the radio dubbed the snow storm 'The Blizzard of 2007.'

 

William sat strapped in his booster seat in the back. Mulder put him in the middle of the vehicle rather than near a window, since Dana claimed the center was statistically safer. The first grade class's hamster, Hammy, got a window seat and lived dangerously, though at William's insistence, Mulder had belted Hammy's cage in.

 

His son got the 'privilege' of caring for the hamster for the weekend. Like the alleged 'privilege' of having a parent chaperone art museum field trips or provide healthy snacks for Miss Janet's World Day of Peace celebration, Mulder planned to pass the honor of Hammy's care off to Dana.

 

Not wanting to look away from the highway, Mulder handed his Blackberry back to William. "Call Mommy at work and tell her we're coming to get her," he requested. "Tell her not to try to drive her car in this mess."

 

"Mommy, I'm in charge of Hammy. Mulder says you can't drive," was the message Will conveyed to Dana.

 

Mulder told William to press the speaker button and hold the phone up. "I'm on my way down to get you, Dana," he called in the direction of the back seat. "William's with me. Sit tight and I'll pick you up in front of your office."

 

"I thought you were on your way to LA," Scully's voice answered. "I'm about to leave to get Will. I got a text message. They're closing schools early."

 

"Come out of your basement lair, look out a window, and you'll see why they're closing the schools. My flight doesn't leave until six. Sit tight. I'm getting off I-95."

 

"Do you want me to meet you at the commuter lot-"

 

"Which part of 'I don't want you to drive' is unclear?" Mulder asked. "I will pick you up in front of your office."

 

On the exit ramp, a BMW slid into the emergency lane; the tires spun against the ice as it tried to get going again. The road afterward was flat and relatively straight, but long. Quantico sat in the middle of a forest and a Marine Corps base. No one got in or out quickly.

 

Mulder looked at the dashboard clock, checked his wristwatch, and turned up the radio.

 

Plenty of time.

 

****

 

3:01 PM

 

Dana stood in front of her office building as if waiting at a bus stop. Mulder saw her blue eyes, red nose, and a hint of auburn hair beneath her heavy coat and hat and scarf. The lobby of her office building had windows and glass doors. He started to ask why she hadn't waited inside like any sane person but changed his mind. He still worried she'd choose this particular afternoon to assert her independence and insist on driving herself and their son home.

 

Her little Prius sat in the sparsely occupied parking lot, covered with a layer of ice and snow. Black rectangles on the asphalt marked recently departed G-men and women; the storm rapidly repainted the empty parking spaces white.

 

"Mulder said a bad word," William informed his shivering mother as she got in.

 

"Mulder's probably gonna say a few more in the near future," Mulder responded, and put the transmission in gear again.

 

Dana talked with William as she unbundled, asking him about his day at school. She got the same briefing on how to care for a hamster Mulder had. It was "a very big responsibility" and "not everyone gets to take care of him," according to their just-turned-six-year-old. Mulder heard her assure William a medical doctor could keep a rodent alive for a weekend.

 

"I thought the forecast said a light dusting," she observed as she strapped herself in, focused on Mulder.

 

"It did. Either the storm shifted, or Holman and Sheila Hardt are vacationing in the DC Metro area and having marital problems."

 

"Who in the world are Holman and Sheila Hardt?" she asked.

 

"Never mind," Mulder muttered, and concentrated on driving.

 

****

 

3:05 PM

 

"Holman Hardt from Kroner, Kansas?" she said. "The weatherman from the case where a tornado picked up a cow and it landed in your motel room?"

 

"The tornado hurled it at my room," he corrected. "Yes, that Holman Hardt."

 

In the back seat, Hammy ran at top speed on his little plastic wheel.

 

"Holman Hardt married Sheila Fontaine? His coworker? The woman previously engaged to Daryl Mootz who originally believed she caused the unexplained meteorological phenomena?"

 

"Yes," he managed tightly. He hated her quoting his case files to him. "Dana, they invited us to their wedding. You'd been shot and we didn't go, but we sent a gift. That's how we learned Wal-Mart has a bridal registry. You got an invitation to Sheila's baby shower. We'd been partially digested by hallucinogenic mushrooms in North Carolina. As soon as they let us go from the hospital, though, we learned Wal-mart also has a baby registry."

 

"Oh," she answered. "What did we get them? For the wedding? For the baby?"

 

"I don't remember. You picked. Both times you over-ruled my vote for a small fallout shelter as being 'insensitive' and 'less than optimistic'."

 

****

 

3:09 PM

 

"Wallace and Angela Schiff," she announced. "Skeletonized remains discovered in the forest of North Carolina. September 1999. Attributed to an unusually large, previously undiscovered carnivorous fungus using hallucinogenic spores to subdue and to slowly digest its victims. We barely escaped being its victims."

 

He tapped his nose. "Bingo."

 

She thought a moment. "I can't imagine how either of us gets health or life insurance."

 

"I have to start by convincing them I'm no longer dead," he reminded her, and she smiled her Mona Lisa smile.

 

He still felt a little pitter-pat in his belly, and he smiled back even though he didn't mean to.

 

****

 

3:50 PM

 

The entrance ramp to the Interstate hadn't been scraped or salted. One driver's solution was to stop half-way up it and get stuck in the middle of the road. Mulder put the Jeep in four-wheel-low, pulled into the emergency lane, and went around. At the top of the ramp, a red Tahoe decided the emergency lane was the right idea and pulled out directly in front of them.

 

Mulder said one of those bad words again. This time, Dana grabbed the dashboard and echoed him as he slammed on the brakes. They missed the Tahoe, and the guardrail, by a few inches as the Cherokee slid to a sideways stop.

 

"Daddy, you made Hammy fall off his wheel," William informed him. "Please be careful."

 

Mulder took a deep breath and said, "Sorry, buddy," before he eased onto the road. "I'm trying to be careful."

 

A south-bound snow plow passed, clearing a path for the vast migration of commuters out of DC. It did little good, though. The salt wouldn't melt the snow and ice at this temperature.  By Montclair the southbound lane had come to a bumper-to-bumper standstill.  

 

Their side of the highway hadn't been cleared, but traffic was sparse. He'd take it. After growing up in Massachusetts, driving on ice or in a blizzard didn't pose a problem. The people who either panicked or decided to try out the family SUV's snowmobiling capabilities: they posed a problem.

 

"Sheila Fontaine kissed me," he told Dana, who'd been looking out the window at the white blur. "She caught me off-guard and laid a lip-lock on me like one of those face-suckers in ‘Aliens.’ For months afterward, every time I felt under the weather, you told me she'd given me mono."

 

"I did not," she insisted.

 

"Check my medical records," he challenged. "See how many times you swabbed my throat between January 1999 and that fall. After Cancerman prescribed me some non-elective brain surgery, you didn't think the mono joke was funny anymore."

 

She shook her head, but he knew she'd be checking his medical records as soon as possible.

 

"I think Hammy's cold," William's voice said.

 

Mulder glanced in the rearview mirror. The heater was doing its best against fifteen degrees, but the interior of the Jeep couldn't be characterized as 'toasty.' "Are you cold, son?"

 

"Hammy's cold. He's shivering."

 

"How is he cold?" Mulder asked. "He's wearing a fur coat. Maybe he's sniffing."

 

"He's cold," William insisted.

 

"Rodents can catch cold," Dana informed them. "They're accustomed to living in large familial groups in warm burrows, so they have difficulty in a solitary, artificial environment like a cage."

 

Mulder fished behind him for his trench coat, and handed it to William. "Put this over him, buddy. Cover up his cage. He'll be warmer."

 

"He'll be in the dark."

 

"He has excellent night vision," Dana promised William.

 

Mulder looked in the mirror again. His black trench coat covered the hamster's cage. William left a little window near the top, which he peered and whispered through to Hammy. Mulder would end up with a coat smelling like cedar bedding and pet rat, but one pocket already smelled like Play-Doh, and hopefully he wouldn't need the coat in LA.

 

****

 

4:29 PM

 

"My carry-on is in the back," he told Dana. "If you'll drop me at the train station, I'll take the Metro to National, and you and William can go on to my house. I went to the grocery store yesterday. All the sheets are clean. When the weather lets up, either go back to Quantico and get your car - leave the Jeep - or take the Jeep to your apartment and we'll sort out vehicles once I get back."

 

She looked at the white sky. The snow wouldn't stop anytime soon. "You don't mind me staying there?"

 

He shook his head. "William can show you where everything is. The locked, lower drawer of my desk, though - you might want to leave that alone. I'm holding some adult audio-visual material for Melvin Frohike."

 

"Mommy," William's voice said from behind him. "I'm supposed to take Hammy home for the weekend. I told Miss Janet I was taking him home. He's a big responsibility."

 

"We are taking him home," Dana told him uncertainly. "He can stay in your bedroom or beside the fireplace at Daddy's house; you can pick."

 

"I have three surviving fish," Mulder asserted, though if he'd had the privilege of supervising Hammy all weekend, there might have been a secret, late-night burial followed by a mission to the pet store to buy a replacement rat.

 

"I'm supposed to take him to my home. That's why I have him this weekend. Because I'll be home, with you."

 

Mulder had both hands on the steering wheel, his knuckles white, though a death-grip on the wheel wasn't necessary at thirty miles per hour.

 

"Baby, Mulder's house is your home, too," she explained, giving Mulder an anxious glance. "You have two homes: Daddy's house and my apartment. Daddy's house has a big yard. We can make a snowman. We can make an igloo at the rate it's snowing."

 

"But I told Miss Janet I'd take him home," William protested.

 

As they approached the beltway, Mulder stopped clenching his teeth, moved to the left lane, and said, "Okay, son. We're taking Hammy to Mommy's apartment."

 

"No, we're not," Dana protested.

 

Mulder ignored her.

 

She repeated, "No, we're not. This is ridiculous. Mulder, you won't make your plane. William-"

 

"I need my cell phone," Mulder requested. "William, may I have my phone, please?"

 

Mulder heard the hamster's plastic cage open.

 

"Why is my Blackberry in his cage?"

 

"A nightlight," William said, as he handed the phone forward.

 

As Mulder expected, traffic moved at glacial speed. He let the Jeep idle forward, blew the cedar shavings off his phone, and dialed work.

 

"Diane, I need you to switch my flight," he said when his secretary at the ISU answered. "I won't make it to National in time. See about an eight o'clock out of Dulles. Or BWI."

 

"You left to go home and pack hours ago," the young woman's voice said skeptically, over the speakerphone. She cracked her bubblegum. "Why do you want to fly out of BWI?"

 

"I had to pick up William from school and drive back to Quantico to pick up his mother. I'm taking them to her apartment, so put me on a flight out of Dulles or BWI."

 

"You're carpooling with Dr. Scully these days?" the voice teased, and she cracked her gum again. "Has there been a rekindling? A little requiting of unrequited love? Enquiring single minds among the secretarial staff want to know."

 

"Diane, Dr. Scully can hear you and I can fire you," he said evenly. "Find me a later flight out of Dulles or BWI."

 

Mulder heard a wet ‘puh’ sound, as if Diane spit out her gum. "Hold," her voice said flatly.

 

On a good day, if the stars aligned, the drive between Scully's apartment and Quantico took just shy of an hour. Eighty minutes was more likely. Add traffic delays and picking up or dropping off William at school in Alexandria, and the trip took an hour and a half each way. At his house in Alexandria, Mulder was ten minutes from William's school, thirty minutes from Quantico - and nowhere near Dana's apartment in Georgetown.

 

"There's nothing available out of Dulles until ten. You're on an 8:05 direct flight from BWI to LAX," the speaker on his phone announced. "I'm e-mailing you the flight information. If you don't make the 8:05, the next option is an 8:39 flight through Dallas."

 

"I hate Dallas," Mulder told the phone irritably.

 

"I know you hate Dallas. Everyone knows you hate Dallas; you wrote a memo. There's a 9:55 redeye out of Dulles with two seats still available. Everything's delayed, but still scheduled to take off. They're de-icing the planes, but the man I talked with at Dulles said they'll probably shut the airports down as the temperature falls tonight."

 

"Thank you, Diane."

 

After a second of silence, her voice said, "Dr. Scully?"

 

"Yes," Dana responded, looking at the phone.

 

"I know he's rough around the edges, but he's easy on the eye, he's a profiling genius, and he makes pretty babies. Requite the man a little," she suggested. "Please. For everyone's sake."

 

"You're fired," Mulder told her flatly.

 

"Oh, I'll pack up my desk, Special Agent Mulder," Diane responded sarcastically. "Let me know when the Bureau finds another administrative assistant willing to put up with your disorganized, insomniac, insensitive, slide-show showing nonsense. I'll vacate my office," she promised.

 

"I'm serious this time," Mulder answered. "You're fired."

 

"You've fired me twice since Christmas. In January, you fired me after you interrupted my daughter's birthday party because the Xerox machine jammed on a Saturday and you wanted me to come in and fix it."

 

"You have a daughter?" he asked, surprised.

 

"Make sure your new assistant makes house calls," his secretary's voice continued. "Spends hours tracking you down when you won't answer your phone. Lies to the Deputy Director of the FBI when you're trying to dodge him. Make sure she's willing to put on some poor murder victim's clothes, sprawl on the floor, and pretend to be dead so you can 'visualize the scene.' And she lets you take photos."

 

"The victim wore a size 10 tall," Mulder reminded her. "You were perfect. The outfit looked good. It was a good color for you," he said, but asked, "That's not sexual harassment, is it?"

 

"That's just plain creepy," Diane said.

 

Scully's head nodded in agreement.

 

"Dr. Scully, I retract what I said," Diane's voice said. "If I don't have to deal with the man, you can let him pine. And hey boss - when you post my job, don't forget to mention you have rotten human remains in our lunchroom refrigerator."

 

"Animal remains," Mulder insisted. "They're wrapped and bagged."

 

"They've dripped," his secretary informed him, and hung up.

 

Dana gave him a skeptical look.

 

"I talked on the telephone last week with a rancher out west who's a witness in a case we're working," he explained. "After he told me what he could about the victims, he and I got to talking about how he'd found several of his kids dead. Baby goat kids; not kid kids. He mentioned the chupacabra, so I said 'Send me a goat.' So he did. U.S. Postal Service. Standard mail. Seven to nine days. I got a box this morning with a two-week dead baby goat in it."

 

She wrinkled her nose in horror.

 

"I know. I caused a spontaneous evacuation of the building as I cut open the box. The thing is rank, but I can't tag and store it as evidence. It's not part of any case. What was I supposed to do until I could have you look at it?"

 

"You planned to give me a rancid goat?" She blinked those blue eyes at him. "But it's not my birthday until the end of the month."

 

"Valentine's day."

 

****

 

5:03 PM

 

"Buddy, don't take the hamster out of his cage," Mulder said, looking in the rearview mirror. "He can't be out of his cage, like you can't be out of your seatbelt. It's not safe."

 

William had freed Hammy and cupped him against his chest. "I have to go to the bathroom," he answered.

 

"He has your bladder control," Mulder informed Dana, and changed lanes to get off the Interstate.

 

He spotted a Shell gas station right off the exit, though the S on the sign had either burned out or succumbed to drunken frat boys. It read 'hell' in bright, cheerful red and yellow letters, as in 'the road to' was paved with good intentions.

 

"This doesn't bode well," he observed as he turned toward it. "Maybe there's another option."

 

"We have a six-year-old," she reminded him. "I suggest we stop and take our chances."

 

"Skull Island? Mount Doom? The Death Star? The Cliffs of Insanity?" Mulder listed. "Sometimes it's a quiet little town with a secret, but sometimes it's right on the welcome sign."

 

In the back seat, William started to squirm. The choice was Hell or have him pee beside the road.

 

Dana looked at the sign, at the snow-covered parking lot, and said, "It's frozen over. You're armed; you'll be fine. In fact, see if there's hot tea in you-know-where," she requested.

 

Mulder parked and bundled William up. He held his son's mitten-covered hand so the boy didn't get blown away as they dashed across the slick lot and into the convenience store.

 

He saw apples in the basket by the register, and Mulder picked up two and a couple sandwiches from the deli case. He bought Dana hot tea, got milk for William, and got the largest cup of coffee available for himself. The Hell station was, in fact, clean and discouragingly free of anything eviler than Twinkies and some Keanu Reeves DVD's on sale.

 

His coat still covered Hammy's cage, but Mulder had left the Jeep running to keep Dana warm. William had to be buckled in again, though, so the heater fought a losing battle with the snowstorm by the time Mulder got back in the driver's seat.

 

"Herbal passion fruit tea, with honey," he told her, his teeth still chattering, as she took the lid off the Styrofoam cup to check.

 

"Chips?" Dana asked optimistically as Mulder sorted out the food.

 

He produced a little bag of Baked Lay's for her, and the apple. The only time he ever saw her eat potato chips was with a tuna salad sandwich, and she ate the baked or faked kind.

 

"It's still spooky you can do that," she commented. "Know what I'd choose for myself."

 

"I am the head spook of the spooky services unit," he quipped. "Seven, almost eight years, Dana: food, beverages, airline seats, motels, rental cars," he listed for her. "Anything on our per diem is a cinch. Clothes," he added. "You've sent me home from the hospital to get you a change of clothes enough times that I could probably choose your clothing. I'm clear on your living will, too, though let's hope the need doesn't arise again."

 

"You knew what I wanted for William," she answered, and something in her voice was different. "When he was born. After my abduction. You knew I wanted him with you."

 

He shrugged one shoulder but wished he hadn't as it twinged painfully. "I don't think I should get credit, since you don't remember wanting it. You're going on what I've told you over the years."

 

He didn't hear a response from the passenger seat. She did give him the first bite from her sandwich, and a thin slice of salty cardboard alleged to be a potato chip.

 

On the beltway, he merged behind the same green Chevy truck he'd followed for the last ten miles.

 

Nothing lost, nothing gained.

 

****

 

5:23 PM

 

"Buddy..." Mulder said uncertainly. He looked first in the mirror and quickly over his shoulder. "Where's the hamster, William?"

 

William held his plastic bottle of milk with one hand and the last of his sandwich with the other. Beside him, the door of the hamster's cage was open.

 

"I put him in your pocket. He's pretending it's a burrow."

 

"When?"

 

"When we stopped."

 

"In the pocket of my trench coat?" Mulder asked unhappily. "Dana-"

 

"I'm on it," she said. She unfastened her seatbelt and leaned back between the seats. For a bit, he saw the reflection of her backside in his rear-view mirror, but the pleasantness was off-set as she said slowly, "Mulder..."

 

"Shit. He's on the loose?" He checked the floorboards under his feet, trying to seem casual. "Can you see him?"

 

William pushed his lower lip out, and his eyes filled with tears.

 

"He's exercising, William," Mulder said, trying to sound convincing. "He's been in a cage all day.

 

"He's lost," William sobbed. "He's my responsibility."

 

"William, you're the one who let him out. Mommy's gonna find him, though," Mulder promised. "Dana, do you see him? Tell me you see him."

 

"I'm looking," she assured him.

 

"Look harder," he encouraged her nervously.

 

****

 

5:34 PM

 

The Jeep’s interior lights were on. William sat red-faced and sniffing. No one offered him any comfort.

 

Dana sat Indian-style in her seat, watching the floor. Every so often, she leaned over and checked the driver's-side floor, which comforted Mulder. He waited for the damn rat to run up his pants leg at any second.

 

He saw the taillights of the same green Chevy, thirty feet ahead of him, through the white blur.

 

Dana tipped her head silently and pointed at the bottom of the passenger-side door. A little peach-colored, whiskered head peaked out from beneath her seat.

 

Wordlessly, Mulder reached under his arm, unfastened the holster, and passed her his SIG Sauer.

 

She giggled, and the hamster's head disappeared again.

 

"You think I'm joking?" he asked. "Nuke it from orbit, kill it with fire for all I care."

 

She was ready the next time, and netted Hammy with her fancy knitted hat. "Got him."

 

"Good."

 

Dana held the hamster up to Mulder, who leaned away.

 

"I'm driving. Put him back in the cage. William, Mommy caught your rat. Do not let him out again. I mean it."

 

"He looks like a tribble," she told him, examining the hamster. "A boy tribble. Wow."

 

"Let me see," Mulder requested, glancing over. "Those are impressive," he agreed.

 

"In some mammals, the size of the testes is inversely proportional to the size of the animal's brain," she told him. "One species of big-eared bat has testes constitute 8.5% of its body weight. On an average adult human male, it would correspond to fifteen pounds."

 

"Which would make running uncomfortable." He watched the windshield wipers slap back and forth for a moment, and the snowflakes fall through the headlight beams. "Is the moral here 'smart is sexy' or 'size does matter'?"

 

She held up the hamster again, cupping him in her hands.

 

Hammy's nose twitched as he sniffed at them.

 

"The answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42," she squeaked in what he assumed was supposed to be a rodent voice.

 

"Don't quote the blasphemy that was that Hitchhiker's movie," he warned her. "Woman, I will stop this car and put you out."

 

"Take his brain!" the rodent squeaked via his former partner.

 

****

 

5:55 PM

 

"I'm stopping at the Metro station," he said for the third time. "I'll catch the train, and you can drive home."

 

"You'll have to transfer from the red line to the green and wait in the MARC train or the bus to BWI. You won't make an 8 o'clock flight," Dana repeated. "Drive to the airport."

 

"The trains are no slower than driving in this mess, and the roads are not going to get any better."

 

Mulder had to think to remember their last fight. Like most ex's, they disagreed - generally over what William was and wasn't allowed to do. Each made the occasional mutter or snide comment, but the last big blow-up dated to long before William's birth.

 

Voices started to get loud at the moment, though. Dana Scully would be a lot safer if she'd agree with him, and she was convinced of the same about Mulder.

 

It was rush hour. The snow plows and salt trucks lost ground against the storm and the cold. He could drop Dana and William off at her apartment, but it left her with his Jeep at the airport, her car at Quantico, and a long walk to the closest Metro station.

 

"If I drive to the airport, you and William have to drive back to your apartment. Drop me off at Dupont Circle and I'll take my chances."

 

"I'm familiar with your relationship with Lady Luck. Keep driving," she ordered, so he exhaled and stayed on the Interstate.

 

****

 

7:56 PM

 

"Your flight's still listed as delayed," Dana told him as he navigated through the traffic in front of BWI's main terminal.

 

"Does it say how delayed? Or if it's still taking off?"

 

She checked the screen of his phone again. "No. Just it's delayed."

 

He parked in front of the US Air sign and left the Jeep running. By the time he got his carry-on out of the back, Dana had maneuvered into the driver's seat. The snow blew against his face, stinging, and crunched under his shoes.

 

Mulder opened the back door, got his trench coat, and leaned in to give William a kiss. "Bye, buddy. I love you. I'll call you tomorrow, and I'll see you in a few days."

 

"Okay. Bye, Daddy."

 

William held up a hamster absolutely not supposed to be out of the cage again.

 

"I'm not kissing the tribble, William."

 

William gave the hamster's nose a kiss for him.

 

Dana rolled down the driver's side window and handed Mulder his Blackberry. She'd driven the Volvo numerous times, but had never even been in the Jeep before today.

 

"Do you understand how the four-wheel drive works?" he asked.

 

"I have things under control. Go."

 

"Okay," he answered. "You're sure? Just-"

 

"I'm a grown woman. I can drive a vehicle, Dad," she said sarcastically, adjusting the seat forward so her feet reached the pedals. "I promise I won't put a scratch on your new baby."

 

"My baby is in the back seat," he informed her, "and you're in the front. Just- Just be careful." He put his hand on her warm cheek and moved to kiss her before he caught himself. "Okay?"

 

"Okay. Go," she said after a moment. She seemed dazed. "You'd better run."

 

He nodded, told her again to be careful, and sprinted for the terminal. Inside, he discovered wall-to-wall unhappy, stranded people occupying themselves by yelling at the airline agents.

 

Mulder put his Bureau credit card into one of the kiosks, pushed the right buttons, and, once it spit out a ticket, he headed for security.

 

Bypassing the long line, he flashed his badge at the guard. He opened his suit coat to show the holster and kept walking toward the executive security gate. He still had to get through the machines, but at least the line was shorter.

 

He was third from the front as the waiting passengers gave off a collective groan. Mulder looked up at the big screen to see the status of his flight to Los Angeles - as well as every other flight out of Baltimore - had changed from delayed to canceled.

 

He turned around, heading for the train station, and dug out his phone again. Mulder dialed his secretary's home number. He told Diane she was rehired and to put him on the 9:55 flight out of Dulles.

 

****

 

11:57 PM

 

Icicles hung from the trees and the power lines, and silvery powder blanketed the sidewalk and buildings. The world was a beautiful, magical winter place - if he'd been inside looking out at it. Outside, it was miserable. The temperature had dropped near zero, and the walk from the Metro station to Scully's apartment became a special thrill in eight inches of snow while wearing $300 loafers.

 

He'd grown accustomed to used tissues in his pockets and chocolate smears on his shirts. A purple crayon he'd found upon emptying the dryer. A tube of Chapstick in William's snowsuit and a Tootsie roll tucked in a miniature pair of blue jeans: ditto the post-dryer discovery.  At least the puking stage had passed. As a baby, William prefered spitting up on the most expensive garment available. Leather or suede, if possible, but anything Armani would do in a pinch.

 

Now Mulder contended with bloody noses and muddy handprints and allegedly 'washable' markers: snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails. Aliens, conspiracies, and monsters he could battle, but Mulder had surrendered to fatherhood. He stopped buying designer suits, learned to double-check pockets, and resigned himself to being a human napkin for a few more years.

 

At Christmas, though, he walked past a display at Saks and his old friend Hugo Boss called, "Remember me? From your former life?" He had a Robert Modell moment in the men's shoe department, with Mulder rationalizing, "What could the Wunderkind do to shoes?" as he reached for his Visa card.

 

The loafers survived the wilderness of Alexandria, so he optimistically bought the Grand Cherokee. The second week he had it, William christened the back seat with a full cup of some steamed chocolate soy milk concoction he'd brought from Dana's. Stephanie recommended a detailing guy, and now the new Jeep only smelled faintly of soured chocolate soy milk.

 

Mulder missed the days he considered touching bile the grossest thing ever.

 

"It's not paranoia if the entire universe really is out to get me," he told Dana as she answered her door.

 

"Are you having a rough night, sailor?

 

"I can't feel my toes. My left coat pocket smells like hamster pee and has things in it I'm telling myself are raisins."

 

She gave him a sympathetic smile. "I had to kiss a frighteningly well-endowed tribble goodnight."

 

He leaned against the door jam tiredly. "Shit. No one is safe."

 

"Come on in, Mulder."

 

A candle burned on her coffee table, smelling of vanilla and sandalwood, and she had the fireplace going and Gladys Knight on the stereo. She'd changed into a sweater and jeans, and she carried a glass of red wine.

 

Mulder hung his wet coat up and left his ruined loafers beside the front door.

 

Dana offered homemade chicken noodle soup, which smelled and sounded nice, but staving off hypothermia took priority. In the shower, Mulder stood under the hot water until his fingers and toes thawed. His toiletries bag was still in his carry-on beside the sink, and he didn't want to get water on her floor to retrieve it. That meant using Dana's ample supply of bath products. He chose William's shampoo and the least girlie soap, but sniffed the others, trying to discover the secret combination making her smell so nice.

 

Mulder heard a knock on the bathroom door. The door opened, and Dana asked if he needed his clothes clean for the next morning.

 

"Are you doing laundry anyway?" he called from the shower stall and stopped playing with her organic body washes.

 

"That wasn't the question," her voice answered from the doorway. "Is everything machine washable?"

 

"Hell to the yeah," Mulder assured her. He opened the shower door, peaked out, and asked, "Seriously: do you still buy dry clean only?"

 

"We have Will, I'm a forensic pathologist, and you swear there's some global doomsday coming. I'm looking into a Level A Hazmat suit lined with Kevlar and coated with Teflon," she answered.

 

Mulder blew the drop of water off his nose and agreed that was the right idea before he went back to his shower.

 

Through the frosted glass door, he saw her moving around the bathroom and heard the door close again. He discovered she’d collected his wet clothes from the floor and left him a fresh towel.

 

He changed into a T-shirt and pair of loose running pants from his carry-on and, thankfully, a pair of dry socks. He returned from the bathroom, feeling less vengeful against the universe, and she handed him a glass of wine.

 

Mulder asked, "Did you notice my phone is missing part of the Q-W-exclamation point key, and the surrounding keys have been suspiciously gnawed on?"

 

"I did, but I was afraid to tell you," she confessed. "You wanted to catch your plane, and I was afraid you'd lapse into catatonic schizophrenia."

 

He must still be hypothermic - or else it was all the shampoo sniffing - because a voice in the back of his brain ordered, "kiss her."

 

"What, what am I going to do if I come across the queen werewolf?" he asked, sitting on the arm of her sofa. "Quasi-warlocks? Quietly weeping statues?"

 

"Run? Hide?" she suggested, and took a sip of wine. "Do you want a sweatshirt?"

 

"Yeah. I packed for LA. Do you still have one here?"

 

"Let me look," she offered.

 

He followed her to her bedroom, sipping the wine and rolling his shoulder. He had no idea why, but the old gunshot wound hurt if he moved his shoulder the wrong way.

 

Mulder paused to check on William, who was sound asleep. The hamster cage rested on his nightstand with a baby blanket draped over it. He heard the rat running on its plastic wheel.

 

Mulder sat on the end of Dana’s bed as she looked through the dresser drawer below the one that used to be his.

 

"This one?" she asked, holding up a gray pullover with 'National Rifle Association' on it. "Is this yours?"

 

"Not mine. I bet it belonged to Jack."

 

She put a sweatshirt from 'Georgetown University School of Medicine' aside without offering it. She remembered Daniel Waterston.

 

"Are these like trophies?" he teased her. "Notches on the bedpost?"

 

"I hope not," Dana told him. She held up a nice, fleece zip-up with 'Guantanamo Bay Naval Base' on the chest. "This one is Bill's."

 

"I'll take Jack's," Mulder decided, holding out his hand.

 

"I do have one or two of your shirts somewhere."

 

"Stop looking. You're spoiling my illusions, and I'm afraid you're going to pull out a Quantico polo with 'AD Skinner' on it."

 

She brought him the NRA sweatshirt. "That's not true, is it?"

 

He blinked and assured her, "No. No, Dana. Not that he wouldn't like it to be, but it's not true."

 

She stepped closer. Mulder sensed she was a glass of wine or two ahead of him. "He'd like it to be?"

 

"Oh, there's a whole bunch of men at the Bureau who'd like to have a sweatshirt in that drawer."

 

Hypothermia, he told himself: poor judgment, unusual speech, disengagement from reality. Not one inch of him felt cold, though. An advanced case. Luckily, he knew a good doctor.

 

Not in more than three years, but he had known her.

 

"Which men?" She took another step so she stood in front of him, close enough he felt the heat from her skin.

 

Her sofa lacked a pillow and blankets. Mulder called her from the airport an hour ago, desperate. The hotels had no vacancies, and Dana had his vehicle. Taxis, shuttles, and even city busses had stopped running. He could sleep on her sofa, bunk with the Gunmen, or stay at the airport. Dana knew an hour ago Mulder was on his way, and she hadn't made up the sofa for him.

 

The I in FBI.

 

She smelled like William's shampoo and old library books and a hint of wood smoke. And amber. He didn't think he'd ever smelled real amber, but he knew it smelled exactly like her. That was probably the secret ingredient.

 

He emptied his wine glass and set it aside,

 

Mulder moistened his lips, wove a finger through a belt loop on her jeans, and said softly, "A whole bunch of us."

 

"You?" she whispered.

 

He put his other hand on her waist, beneath her sweater and against her warm skin. "I don't have a sweatshirt in there," he reminded her huskily. "I have a son."

 

"So you win, Agent Mulder?"

 

He lay back on the bed, pulling her with him. He took her sweater off, revealing a little white lace bra beneath it. She kissed him. Her lips felt soft and tasted of tart wine.

 

He rolled so she was underneath him. "I surrender. You win," he told her. "I'm supposed to be in LA. You are interfering in important FBI business, G-woman."

 

"LA is on Pacific Time. It's three hours earlier."

 

"I guess I have three hours," he whispered.

 

He kissed her again. She opened her mouth, put a leg around his hips and, like a warm hearth, drew him in.

 

****

 

12:51 AM

 

"Wow," Scully's voice told the ceiling softly.

 

Mulder turned his head lazily, looking at her. "Wow?" If this was the last time in his life he got to make love to her, he'd take a 'Wow.'

 

He'd categorize and reference the recent turn of events as a 'wow.'

 

She nodded. "Are you doing the Boston Marathon?" she asked, still breathless. Her skin flushed from her face to her breasts, and her voice sounded like something men usually had to pay by the minute to listen to.

 

"This spring," he answered. "I'd like to take William up that weekend and spend some time with my aunts. The race is on Monday, though, and he'd have to miss a day of school."

 

"Okay," she murmured, and he suspected she'd agree to anything at the moment. "Your stamina is excellent."

 

"There's also form, technique," Mulder told her, knowing she didn’t care but wanting something to say. "It's not just running."

 

He'd never put Jack Willis' sweatshirt on, and now Mulder's clothes were scattered on the floor around her bed, along with hers. He was naked and sweaty and sticky, and he preferred not to move a muscle unless she told him to.

 

Dana rolled to her side, facing away from him. The overhead light was still on. As she pulled a blanket over her, he noted whatever funky yoga classes she took, her form looked excellent.

 

"There's mindset," he told the back of her head. "You are the runner you think you are."

 

He didn't hear an answer.

 

The storm outside raged, blowing the snow so hard against her bedroom windows the flakes made little tinkling sounds.

 

"Do you want me to stay here with you or move to the sofa?" he asked her back.

 

The silence lasted long enough Mulder decided she wasn't going to answer, though he knew she wasn't asleep. He got up, found all his clothes, and, sighing, turned off her bedroom light, and went to her bathroom to rinse off and get dressed again.

 

He went to check on William, and even lifted the blanket on the cage to check on the damn rat. Hammy climbed up the plastic periscope extending from the top of his cage as if trying to figure out where he was and what the hell had happened. Mulder felt validated and gave the rodent a sympathetic look.

 

"Daddy?"

 

"Hi, buddy," he said, sitting on the edge of William's bed. "The airplanes aren't flying because of the snow. Mommy said I could stay here tonight."

 

William's eyes opened halfway. "It was nice of you to drive us home," he mumbled, repeating what Dana must have said earlier.

 

"I wanted to make sure you got here safely." He put his hand on the boy's belly and kissed his forehead. "Go back to sleep."

 

He left William's room, headed for the sofa. Dana stood in the doorway of her dark bedroom wearing pale blue cotton pajamas.

 

She gestured for Mulder to come with her as she returned to bed.

 

He slid under the covers, curled up behind her, and put his arms around her. It was still familiar. Maybe his limbic system still loved hers, too, despite what his higher brain intended. The dreamer in him wanted to think they could start over - or start again. The profiler in him knew she didn't love him the way he loved her, but he was off the FBI clock.

 

"That was different," her voice said, in the darkness.

 

"Different how?" he asked, a trained interrogator asking a question he knew the answer to. If tonight had been the last chance he got to make love to her, he'd wanted it to be memorable. Not sweet, Sunday afternoon while-the-baby-slept sex - which they'd once been adept at - but memorable. For both of them. Toe curlingly, mind-blowingly memorable to the point he hesitated to look her in the eye afterward. "Good different or bad different?"

 

"Rougher. More passionate." She paused. "I think of you as a good lover: generous, caring, creative. I don't think... You're Will's father, in bed with me. Tonight, you seemed to know things about me I didn't think you did."

 

"It's not different," he promised. "It's different from what you remember."

 

He bit his lower lip.

 

She continued lying in his arms, facing the corner of her bedroom, with her eyes open.

 

She said nothing, and he said nothing, and his shoulder hurt again for absolutely no reason.

 

Down the hallway, Hammy climbed on his wheel again, running feverishly and going nowhere.

 

****

 

5:43 AM

 

"You still don't sleep," Scully's voice observed tiredly, from behind him. "I'd like to examine your reticular activating system one of these days."

 

Mulder pivoted in the chair, away from the computer screen. He wore his running pants and T-shirt, but still shunned the NRA sweatshirt.

 

"Bad dream?" she asked.

 

"Is it okay - me using your computer?" he asked. "The power has been blinking on and off, and I wanted check the airports and e-mail Skinner. I could use my Blackberry, but not if there are Q's, W's, or I want to be emphatic."

 

She stretched, raising her arms over her head, and he saw the old scar on the white expanse of her abdomen below her pajama top. She ambled over to the window, looking out at the streetlight shining down on the white drifts. He wasn't going anywhere this morning.

 

"I know," he said. "I wanted to check. Women dying in LA creates a sense of urgency."

 

He heard the coffee machine's metal gut popping and creaking to life. She didn't kiss him, or touch him, or give any indication he hadn't spent the night on her sofa.

 

"Are you sending another profiler?" she asked.

 

"There aren't any available. No, I e-mailed Skinner about giving Diane a raise. I said 'fuck' to her last night."

 

"You said 'fuck' to me last night. Do I get a raise?"

 

"You don't work for me, and I said it in an entirely different context," he assured her.

 

"You said it when you called me from the airport. You said all the fucking hotels were full because of the Goddamn storm."

 

"I'll talk to Skinner," he agreed, and resumed typing.

 

****

 

7:28 PM

 

With help from the grown-ups, William made a snowman, a snow girl, and a snow Loch Ness Monster. Photos of all three got e-mailed to Dana's mother in Baltimore and Mulder's aunts in Boston.

 

They had hot cocoa, grilled cheese sandwiches, toasted marshmallows, and chicken noodle soup made from a chicken rather than a can.

 

They'd learned hamsters only liked to be kissed so many times before they bit, but William was more frightened than hurt. He'd cried, and still had a purple pinch mark on his lower lip, but the rift between boy and rat mended by bedtime.

 

"That's how life works, buddy," Mulder told him. He'd kissed a few things that bit him, too.

 

Once night fell, the sofa cushions became walls and the blanket from William's bed was draped over a card table, creating a fort for him and Hammy. The power and the cable went out, but the snow stopped, so the lights could be back on soon. Dana had candles and the fireplace burning, and her living room was bathed in warm yellow light. Since the couch lacked cushions, Mulder sat on the floor with his back against the sofa and his feet toward the fire. William lay inside his fort, guarding his hamster with a toy light saber and listening while Mulder read.

 

"He's out, Captain," Scully's voice said.

 

Mulder looked up, and over at William. Under the table, the little boy's eyes had closed, and his head rested on the pillow of his sleeping bag. William still clutched the light saber.

 

"How will I ever find out what happens?" Mulder asked her, closing the book.

 

"Anakin is Darth Vader. Padme dies. The Princess is Luke's sister, and Han Solo gets the girl."

 

He narrowed his eyes at her. "You're such a know-it-all, Scully."

 

"I can't believe you bought him that sleeping bag." She stooped to check on William. "It looks like a necropsy. It's disturbingly realistic and plushophiliac, yet adorably nerdy."

 

The Gunmen, not Mulder, had shelled out the hundred bucks. For his birthday, the Gunmen gave William a sleeping bag made to look like a Tauntaun - the creature Luke Skywalker and Han Solo rode in ‘The Empire Strikes Back.’ It came complete with "simulated Tauntaun fur," a liner printed with entrails, and a zipper down the front, so the kid could crawl inside the creature to stay warm, like Luke. As she said, the sleeping bag was both adorable and disturbing at the same time, and, being their son, William loved it.

 

Mulder loved she knew the word "plushophiliac" and could work it into a casual conversation about a first-grader.

 

Not that she'd offered, but in case she did: he was not sleeping with her again. He'd sleep in the sofa cushion fort with William, if he had to, but under no circumstances would Mulder share her bed. He attributed the previous night to hypothermia and exhaustion and too much red wine. Bad judgment, poor impulse control. Misplaced gratitude on her part and nostalgia on his.

 

Seven years, and the situation hadn't changed. She wanted something he couldn't give her. Some former couples still had 'just sex,' but they didn't. At least, he didn't. Mulder went for the relational brass ring and Scully bolted, rationalized, and avoided. Sex bought both of them a one-way ticket to heartache, whether she remembered it or not.

 

"Don't you worry about Will getting teased about his sleeping bag at Indian Guides?" she asked.

 

Mulder shrugged as she sat down on the floor beside him. "First, they're six-year-olds. The only 'camping' we've done has been indoors. Second, so far, they've all wanted to get in it with him. If you want teasing from little boys, try growing up named 'Fox.'"

 

"Or being a little red-headed know-it-all."

 

"You?" he said in false disbelief.

 

"I went on my first real date with Arnold Capson. He took me to see ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ at the drive-in," she told him. "I spent the entire night nervously lecturing him about archetypes and how the movie was an ode to the old Flash Gordon serials. Poor Arnold-" She stopped. "You've probably heard this story a dozen times," she realized.

 

Mulder shook his head. "No, I haven't, but I feel his pain. What happened to poor Arnold? Suicide? Did he gnaw his own arm off and escape? Or did he catch you with your mouth shut and kiss you?"

 

"I must have shut up at some point, because my memories of Han Solo being frozen in carbonite also involve Arnold Capson trying unsuccessfully to unhook my bra."

 

"Unsuccessfully?"

 

"Front hook. He was stumped."

 

Mulder chuckled and draped his arm on the cushion-less sofa.

 

"Even if carbonite existed, freezing tissue destroys cells to the extent reanimation of a human being is impossible," she told him. "Reanimation is possible in lower life forms or if the subject is merely extremely hypothermic, but with a human-"

 

"Are you trying to get me to kiss you?" he asked sarcastically. "I can work a bra, but I'm busy guarding the rebel base."

 

She gave him an enigmatic smile, took Mulder's hand, and leaned her head against his shoulder affectionately. He felt the warmth from her body, like radiating comfort. Her touch still calmed and centered him.

 

"When he's with me, I see myself in him," she said as they watched William. "But seeing him with you today, I see more of you."

 

"No, he's you," Mulder insisted. "He knew every Latin dinosaur name by the time he was four. Last week, he told me he bumped his humerus and felt 'a cute pain'. Every time I say 'no baseball in the house, son,' and he wants to argue the porch, garage, and deck are not technically part of the house, I think 'thank you so much, Agent Scully.'"

 

"He wanted a Yeti for his birthday," she countered. "He asked me if airplanes flew to Europa and argued with me for ages about the potential for space vacations. He's been trying to pick up his toys using the power of the force - and he's optimistic those Jedi powers are going to kick in at any second."

 

"I think he's the best thing we ever did. Having William and saving the world."

 

"We did not save the entire world, Mulder, and don't say 'I have some old files that beg to differ.' We-"

 

He tilted his head and kissed her, bringing the lecture to a halt before it could start. There was a momentary pause, and he felt her lips moving against his.

 

He thought about it sometimes: being with her, giving it another try. He'd turned forty-five and, on Wednesday, Thursday, and every other weekend, he'd like to come home to more than his fish. They had a son together, and Dana Scully was the rare combination of drop-dead gorgeous, sharp as a tack, and able to put up with him. Every so often, Mulder kicked around whether or not he could be the man she wanted. After a little alcohol or a long day - or if he looked at her and saw His Scully - he sometimes decided he could.

 

Usually, his nostalgic psychosis cleared up within a few hours. No harm, no foul, and no one was the wiser.

 

"Self-defense," he whispered after they parted. "You left me no choice."

 

"Please, Captain, not in front of the Klingon."

 

He gave her a scornful look. "Don't mix genres, Dana," he cautioned as he got to his feet to put some air between them.

 

He stretched his arms upward, getting the kinks out of his back, and rolled his left shoulder a few times. He didn't understand why an old, minor gunshot wound felt like it happened yesterday. His leg ached from another old gunshot wound, sometimes, but never his shoulder. He told himself as he got older, he'd have all sorts of mysterious aches and pains. He didn't quite believe himself, though.

 

"What's wrong with your shoulder?" Dana asked as he helped her up. "You've been favoring it all day."

 

"It's aching - the old scar. I guess it's the cold."

 

"Do you want some acetaminophen? Or a heating-" She stopped as if realizing an electric heating pad wouldn't work with the electricity out.

 

"Some sympathy would be fine."

 

She smiled and kissed the spot on his shoulder like she'd kiss William's scraped knee. She gave the old scar a gentle rub. "Poor Mulder. I'm sorry I shot you."

 

"And?" he prompted.

 

She raised her eyebrows uncertainly.

 

"And space aliens are real," he supplied as if that was the obvious end of the sentence.

 

"According to my report, I wasn't even sorry I shot you. Twelve years ago. With pinpoint accuracy. To prevent you - while under the influence of mind-altering drugs - from implicating yourself in your father's murder. You're only getting so much mileage out of an old scar."

 

"That's okay. The kiss and the rationalizing made it feel better."

 

"That's a placebo effect," she informed him. "Once again, Mulder, I'm not arguing alien life forms don't exist. It's likely they do. I'm saying Alpha Centauri is twenty-four trillion miles away. Traveling at a million miles an hour, it would take the closest aliens 2,500 years to reach Earth. So they could make mysterious crop circles and appear in blurry photographs? The fact we can't prove there aren't aliens visiting Earth does not support the hypothesis there are aliens visiting Earth."

 

He would not sleep with her again.

 

He would not sleep with her again.

 

He would not sleep with her again.

 

He was a grown man. The past was water under the bridge.

 

He wanted to start at the hollow of her throat and kiss a path south until morning. He wanted last night to be the second-to-last time he made love to her, and for tomorrow to never come.

 

Clearly, alien mind control rays were at work in Dana Scully's living room. He'd open an X-file - except he wasn't in charge of the X-files anymore.

 

Mulder took a deep breath. He nodded to William asleep beneath the table-fort, and asked, "Do you want me to carry him to bed?"

 

"He's okay. He'll be warmer in front of the fireplace," she assured him. Taking Mulder's hand, she requested, "You come to bed."

 

Once more, he thought. No pretense, no promises. Two consensual adults, and one more night before the sky fell.

 

He kissed her in the hallway outside her bedroom, opening his mouth and running his fingers through her hair. Her skin felt warm and velvety smooth. The way she breathed, the little sounds she made, the way she touched him hadn't changed since 2000 - when everyone claimed the world would end.

 

Everyone had been wrong then, and no one was being harmed now. Except him, but he'd deal with that tomorrow.

 

He wanted pretense.

 

He wanted promises.

 

He'd settle for one more night, and he felt powerless to resist.

 

Fucking alien mind control rays, Mulder told himself, and followed her to bed.

 

****

 

4:32 AM

 

The electricity had been back on for nearly an hour, and a snowplow rumbled down the street in front of her apartment building. In a few hours, the world would wake up, dig itself out, and life would go on.

 

He knew it and she knew it.

 

The time had come to make a decision. Or not. Unless one of them was abducted, near death, or pregnant, the 'not' option usually won out.

 

"Would it have been easier if it had been someone else?" he asked her, as she returned from the bathroom with her robe wrapped around her. "When you came back, if you'd woken up to two kids, a house in the suburbs, a minivan, and an investment banker husband - to something you thought of as potentially being your life - would it have been easier?"

 

He'd wanted to know, but never worked up the courage to ask. If Dana by-the-book Scully had come back to a set of rules she could play by, would there have been a happily ever after?

 

"Maybe," she answered, and lay down beside him again. "Maybe not. It doesn't matter. We can't go back and change the past."

 

"I have an old X-file that says differently." Still nude, he rolled so he faced her. "I have been accused of being a lousy husband."

 

"You're not a lousy husband. You're not a lousy anything. You can't be something you're not, Mulder. You are brilliant and passionate and dedicated, and you might be the noblest man I've ever met. I respect that about you. I love that about you, but..."

 

"But you couldn't live with that," he supplied.

 

"But you deserve someone who loves you for who you are," Dana said, correcting him.

 

"Which you said you do," he reminded her.

 

She bit her lower lip, hesitating before she spoke. "You said you'd wait forever, and I think you meant forever. You spent half your life searching for your sister, and I think you would have spent the rest of it playing your role and waiting for the woman you loved to come back."

 

He adjusted his pillow, rested his hand in the warm valley of her waist, and said, "We have a son together. We were okay. We would have been okay."

 

"We might have been, but name one thing in your life that's 'okay.' You don't have an 'adequate' setting, Mulder, any more than Will does. There is no half-way with you. You throw yourself into things, whether it's a case or a race or love. If you care about something, you go after it and nothing gets in your way. If that's how you felt about me..." she said, faltering. "You knew we'd drifted apart. We'd become polite strangers sharing an apartment and a son. Why didn't you say anything, do anything? You'd try to fight back the tide, but with me, you went on with your life."

 

"I figured you knew what you wanted." He shifted again. "And you didn't want to live with me."

 

"Mulder, it's not that I can't live with you. I can't live with you being perpetually disappointed in me."

 

****

 

5:01 AM

 

Dana slept soundly.

 

She looked beautiful, all ivory and auburn and rose wrapped in the bed sheets and the moonlight.

 

Fish hooks and buzz saws were more direct torture, but looking at her, touching her, being with her - and knowing she wasn't her - felt like dull needles piercing his heart for years rather than one merciful coup de grace.

 

Mulder went back to their Mystic Pizza Hut a couple years ago, about the time his relationship with Scully 2.0 stopped fizzling and fell flat. He took a big detour on the way to Topeka, turning right at the corner of Nowhere and driving straight through the cornfields to New Bumfuck. The place still had the waitress who looked like the blonde ape in “Plant of the Apes,” and the jukebox that thought the Red Hot Chili Peppers were the latest thing. He ordered “the usual,” and sat in a booth, watching the door.

 

"Let her go," Dr. Ziaus told him, after he sat for an hour, the one customer in the restaurant.

 

Mulder went on to Topeka and wrote a profile on their serial killer. He returned to D.C. and learned, yes, Dana had renewed the lease on her apartment. His new house was nice, but a long drive from her mom's, she'd said.

 

The snow plow passed again, clearing the other side of her street.

 

Mulder got up, showered, and got dressed in a bathroom where a shelf in the medicine cabinet used to be assigned to him. She still had a few things at his house, years old and forgotten. A pair of socks she'd slept in, a pair of little white panties. He'd found some body lotion, a hairbrush, and a pair of earrings she'd left in the bathroom. He had a box of herbal tea in his kitchen cabinet, and a bottle of women's vitamins so old they'd turned a funny rust color. It made no sense for him to keep those things, and yet he did, as she'd kept his apartment for months after his most recent death.

 

Scully kept his apartment in case he came back, and he kept her socks and hairbrush for the same reason.

 

In case His Scully came back.

 

Mulder steered William to the toilet and to bed and covered him with the Star Wars sleeping bag. He gave the boy's forehead a kiss, told him good-bye. He whispered he'd see him in a few days. He always said the same thing as he left.

 

He changed the burnt-out light bulb in the fixture over her kitchen table she had trouble reaching. He'd changed those light bulbs since 1993, when she'd used normal bulbs rather than the environmentally friendly curlicue ones.

 

Mulder remembered changing the bulb in the living room after Donnie Pfaster attacked her, after the police left. He swept up the shattered glass and stood on a chair to reach the fixture while Scully sat numbly and watched him. He wanted her to stay at his apartment, but instead he cleaned up the mess and stayed with her - and it was the first time they chastely shared a bed.

 

If she'd asked and been coherent, the night after Pfaster, Mulder would have made love to her - not out of love, but of kindness - to give her a few minutes to think of nothing. To relax, to sleep. He would have driven to the morgue and shot Pfaster again, if that might have made her feel better, so comfort sex would have been a minor matter. He wouldn't have been sorry, and afterward, he would never have mentioned it again.

 

Mulder set up the old Mr. Coffee, filling the filter with dark roast and setting the timer for 6:30 AM. He knew how she liked her coffee and what time she preferred to wake up. What size she wore and which movies she'd like. How she thought, how she loved, what she valued, and what she wanted out of life.

 

He checked the airline schedules and booked himself on a seven AM direct flight to LA. His carryon was packed and by the front door, and his loafers looked as good as they were going to get.

 

He went back to her bedroom again and watched her as she slept.

 

The clock ticked as he lingered in the doorway, making the monsters of the world wait to be brought to justice.

 

He owed her everything. She kept him honest, pointed him north, and kept him from being John Byers: seeing conspiracies in the cancellation of the TV show “Alias.” She'd been his candle in the darkness for years, and for a few nights, she'd been his lover as well. Past or present, she was a chord resonating in him - even beyond this Earth, even beyond this life.

 

If what she got out of that was Mulder felt perpetually disappointed in her...

 

He could pretend all he wanted, but Dana Scully would always be the horizon to his sky. And he would always be a stranger to her.

 

Mulder told her years ago he didn't want to be her consolation prize, and it wasn't fair to ask her to be his.

 

The best thing he could do for her on that frigid morning in February was leave.

 

So he had.

 

****


	6. Chapter 6

****

 

Day 6: Finding (a) life in the galactic habitable zone

 

****

 

Years ago, Mulder told Agent Reyes death wasn't bad. Dying hurt like hell, and Mulder felt a momentary panicky realization as his life slipped away. Within seconds though, an odd sense of peace replaced the pain and fear, and he met the comforting embrace of an infinite black nothing. Death felt like holding his son or sleeping beside Scully or, as a boy, dozing in the car as his father drove through the night. In the last millisecond of life, everything was safe and settled and warm.

 

What happened between Death taking him and Scully wrestling him back, Mulder couldn't say. He couldn't remember, and he couldn't ask anyone else. He'd met near-death experiencers but getting the three-month all-expenses-paid round-trip to Dead and Back Again was limited to Mulder and, according to Agent Reyes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

Dying hurt. Returning to life hurt. So did leaving the people he loved. In between, though, Mulder experienced a dark, pleasant abyss.

 

He last remembered being in the forest and the bounty hunter throwing him backward. He felt a sickening shock wave through his body as he collided with a tree, and darkness came.

 

Mulder heard before he could move or see: the deafening roar of helicopter blades. Indistinct voices yelling, Scully's voice among them. He smelled the dense, damp vegetative scent of the forest floor. He lay on his back, and he felt hands around his neck, thumbs down. They were a man's large, strong hands - not choking, but keeping his head still. A spinal injury, he surmised.

 

"Get a C-collar on him. I'll do it in the air," Scully's voice ordered, which amused Mulder: his favorite forensic pathologist had decided she was also a flight surgeon. "Go," she yelled. "Let's move."

 

The hands left his neck and a rigid plastic brace replaced them. A mask covered his nose and mouth, forcing air in at regular intervals. The person operating it wore latex gloves - Mulder smelled the powdery odor - and floral-scented hand lotion. The hands belonged to a woman, but not Scully.

 

Seconds later, he was on a backboard and moving up and over, onto a stretcher. Medivac, he thought, taking stock of his situation. Mulder opened his eyes. Everything looked fuzzy, but he saw the chopper blades slicing above him and the evergreen branches against the bright blue sky.

 

Like a ventilator, the facemask continued forcing him to inhale, so he let it. He heard Scully barking orders as they loaded him into the chopper. Someone cut his shirt and pants off, and a man in a blue flight suit started packing bags of ice around him.

 

Mulder got a glimpse of Scully's head as she started an IV with a needle the size of a soda straw. He flinched. She looked up, seeming surprised. Better with dead people, he wanted to tease her. Whatever her plan to save him, he wished she'd implement it more gently.

 

"He's conscious," a young woman's voice announced from above his head. The mask left his face. She repeated, "Dr. Scully, he's conscious," as if trying to convince herself.

 

His hand was freezing, the cold spreading up his arm. Between that and the ice packs lowering his body temperature, he felt himself starting to lose consciousness again.

 

Scully stared at him with a stunned expression. "Mulder?" She blinked twice, recovered her poise, and ordered the pilot, "Go."

 

The chopper blades spun faster. The flight nurse slammed the door closed, and the stretcher tilted as the helicopter lifted off. Through the window, wind whipping his gray hair and green ranger uniform, Mulder saw Jeremiah Smith at the edge of the forest clearing. The bounty hunter was nowhere to be seen.

 

As the chopper rose, Mulder watched Jeremiah Smith touch his finger lightly to the side of his nose, Paul-Newman-in-The-Sting style, as if he and Mulder shared a secret. Seven was the magic number, not eight.

 

"You're going to be fine," Mulder heard Scully assure him as the dark void began to encroach again. He knew she was right, even though she didn't sound convinced.

 

****

 

Consciousness returned gently. Unhurriedly. Mulder’s lungs inflated of their own accord, his heart chambers pumped in patient succession, and his senses awakened. Oxygen met red blood cells and flowed through his body, tingling as it pushed him back to the surface.

 

Mulder felt pain on the sole of one foot, then the other foot, like a series of pin pricks. He jerked his feet away, feeling groggy and annoyed. People spoke quickly. A man's voice told him to move his fingers and toes, but Mulder ignored him, cold and wanting to sleep.

 

Scully's voice ordered him to wiggle, so Mulder decided he better do it.

 

All hospital rooms smelled alike: dirty and sterile and stale at the same time. Hospital blankets never quite felt warm or soft, and the beds were never quite comfortable. He'd been in enough of them to know. His throat had the scoured feeling of having a breathing tube down it recently. Mulder felt the dull ache of an IV line in the back of his hand, and an oxygen monitor clipped to his fingertip. A hand held his, and he knew exactly whose hand it was.

 

He opened his eyes. Scully's face smiled down at him like a sunrise after a seemingly-endless night. He remembered being in Oregon and worrying he'd never again see her smile.

 

A doctor and a nurse stood on the other side of the bed, both with expressions of disbelief. That usually meant a trip to the forest hadn't ended well, and in a month, he'd get a twenty-page insurance statement from Federal Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

 

After a few dry runs at speaking, he asked in a hoarse voice, "Only mostly dead again?"

 

Her hand squeezed his. "Thankfully, only mostly."

 

The bedrails lowered. The doctor shined a pen light in Mulder's eyes, making him wince. "Can you tell me where you are, Agent Mulder?" the young physician wanted to know.

 

All doctors asked, and loudly, and while he was flat on his back. Like Mulder was deaf and supposed to identify his location by the hospital's ceiling tiles.  Since he didn't know his coordinates, he went with the more important fact. "I'm with her," he rasped, and nodded to Scully.

 

"Portland," the doctor corrected brusquely, proving he'd never been in love. "You were brought in two days ago."

 

The doctor continued to assess him while the nurse checked Mulder's collection of monitors. Scully stood beside the bed, held his hand, and didn't seem to care if Mulder could track a finger with his eyes or identify an ink pen. A month ago, she bullied William's pediatrician until the poor woman stood by and let Scully do the checkup. At the moment, though, Dr. Scully, expert in all matters medical, vegetable, animal and mineral, didn't do anything except hold Mulder's hand and watch him as if she thought she'd never see him again, either.

 

Mulder remembered the chopper and the look on her face in the forest. He suspected she wasn't joking about him being “only mostly dead.”

 

He requested in a rough whisper, "Tell me you aren't eight months pregnant again."

 

"No," she assured him. "It's Saturday."

 

A digital clock on the wall said 4:45. The dark window indicated morning, not late afternoon. Mulder looked around, getting his bearings. No roommate, but lots of machines and monitors. The hallway walls were glass so the nurses could keep close watch over the patients. An ICU.

 

"Feels like longer."

 

"What do you remember?" she asked.

 

He swallowed again, thought a few seconds, and answered, "You don't listen when I tell you to run."

 

"Your psychic vampire demigod carried the same retro-viral toxin you were exposed to years ago. The lab identified the same DNA sequences." She said it casually, but her body language and tired eyes gave her away. "We followed my old treatment protocol - blood-thinners, lowering your body temperature. That can cause ventricular fibrillation and the need for mechanical ventilation, of course."

 

He nodded.

 

"I got the lab work back a few hours ago," she continued. "They're the same DNA sequences found in my blood after my abductions, in the bee that stung me years ago, and in William's amniotic fluid during my pregnancy. I can't begin to explain those coincidences."

 

He nodded again. None of this was news to him. He'd been experimented on and infected to the point he doubted his DNA still qualified as human.

 

Scully looked down at their hands for a while, and said, "Your suspect must be a body builder on crystal methamphetamine, because she tossed you into a tree trunk like a rag doll. We treated the retro-virus, but a spinal cord injury that high... My initial diagnosis did not include you waking up this morning."

 

"It's the red shirt."

 

"And being flung head-first into immovable objects. The next time I tell you to keep breathing, you do it, Mulder. If I say move your fingers and toes, do it," she ordered anxiously. "You've disappointed three organ transplant teams."

 

"William?" he whispered.

 

"He's with Mrs. Bahe. Deputy Director Skinner has agents guarding her house. He's safe. I, I told him you'd had a serious accident and the doctors were helping you, but I think he knew it wasn't the whole truth. He's prayed to God, written to Santa, and talked to Deputy Director Skinner about you getting better."

 

"Smart boy. Covering all the bases."

 

The doctor and nurse left them in peace, though probably not for long. In the hallway, the collection of people in scrubs and lab coats grew. They'd each look at his chart, talk to the first doctor, and gawk at Mulder.

 

With the glass door closed, his room was a womb-like fishbowl. Scully sat on the edge of the bed, leaned down, and rested her head on his chest as if she thought he might break. Mulder put his hand on her head and stroked her hair. His lungs and throat felt sandblasted. The IV in his hand was uncomfortable. He had sticky pads on his chest, monitoring his heart. He shifted and discovered the added fun of a catheter, but mostly he felt tired and drugged up.

 

Scully's voice sounded tight. "You were dead, Mulder. You had no pulse, no respiration, no response to pain. I had no cell phone service and no one to send for help. A forest ranger came and radioed for a chopper, but you were gone. The flight nurse knew it, the paramedics knew it, and I knew it. But you woke up. I have no idea how."

 

In what felt like a Herculean effort, Mulder brought up his arm and made a muscle for her. He heard a bark of strangled laughter, and her body convulsed as she tried not to cry.

 

"Thank you," he whispered to her, and put his other hand on her back. "For not giving up."

 

She wore the navy-blue sweater he remembered her putting on when Teresa Hoese showed up at their motel. She kept petting him. She'd lost her battle against tears. He bet, since Thursday, she hadn’t left his side except to pray or check on William. Scully would show him X-rays and scans. She'd rationalize for months. In the end, she'd say it was a miracle, and Mulder wouldn't argue. He'd been down this road before.

 

"Your living will," she managed. "It's 'Do whatever Dr. Scully says. If Scully's laying there with me, do what her living will says.' How long has it said that?"

 

"Since '94," he rasped.

 

"That's humbling, Mulder." Her body shuddered again, and she made a sobbing sound when she breathed.

 

"I believe in you," he promised her.

 

"You believe in everything."

 

"Not like I believe in you. It goes Dana Scully, Jeremiah Smith, and the Yankees." His throat felt raw, but he added, "You've never let me down. Not in all these years."

 

Her back shook. The thin fabric of his hospital gown felt wet from tears. Mulder tried to think of something funny to say or anything to get her to stop crying, but since he couldn't, he whispered, "Come here."

 

In the narrow, uncomfortable ICU bed and with the entire hospital night shift watching, Scully lay down beside him with her head on his heart. She still held his hand like it was a lifeline. It made the IV needle hurt, but he didn't ask her to let go. He'd been down this road before - too many times, in fact - but it was her first trip.

 

"I don't know what happened," she confessed. "I don't know what I saw in the forest or what happened to your attacker or how you're still alive. I don't know what to believe."

 

The glass walls blocked out the sound from the rest of the hospital, so the room was nearly silent. No clock ticking, no footsteps, no sound except their breathing and an occasional left-over sob. Monitors beeping contentedly. The soft rustle of his fingertips rubbing the back of her sweater and toying with her hair. She smelled of coffee and hospital hand soap and weariness, like she always did when Mulder woke in an ICU. The soft light over the bed cast gentle shadows across the stark hospital blankets. The apocalypse fast approached from all sides, but for while, they lay in the quiet eye of the storm.

 

"All the time in the world, Scully," he assured her.

 

****

 

Like every teenage male at the time, Mulder taped the iconic poster of Raquel Welch in an animal-skin bikini to his bedroom wall, and Lynda Carter in her Wonder Woman costume frequently visited his dreams. In 1977, he decided Jacqueline Bisset in a wet T-shirt was the epitome of sexy. In the 80's, his allegiance shifted between Kelly LeBrock and Kim Basinger. Or Melanie Griffith vacuuming in her underwear; if Diana did that, he'd have made it a point to come home after work and they might have stayed married longer. The nineties brought Sharon Stone in a miniskirt and Kathy Ireland in a bikini and Demi Moore in general: God bless America.

 

Frohike yearned for Salma Hayek, partly because of the vampire queen dance in ‘Dusk to Dawn,’ and partly because Frohike was taller than Ms. Hayek. Langly loved Billie Piper and all Cylon women, while Byers kept his preferences to himself. As of late, Mulder publicly expressed approval of the new Bond girl - while trying to not think he'd been at Oxford University the year she was born - and privately appreciated the adult video talents of Nikki Luscious.

 

As of the second Saturday in May, 2007, the sexiest woman Mulder ever laid eyes on stood at the other end of the hospital hallway. She wore Mulder’s shoulder holster, held William's hand, and brandished her badge in the ICU nurse's face in response to the “no weapons,” “no children” and “it's not visiting hours” policies.

 

William spotted Mulder and came running, leaving Scully and the Mickey Mouse backpack in his wake. William took flight a few away and landed in his father's arms with a full-body hug - arms tight around Mulder's neck, legs around his waist, head against his chest.

 

"I'm okay, buddy," Mulder said, and kissed his son's crown, cheek, and crown again. He inhaled, smelling the reassuring scent of clean hair and freshly-mowed grass and innocence. "It's okay."

 

"I was scared."

 

"I’m okay. Don't be scared."

 

"Mommy said you had an accident. Not the wet-your-pants kind, a bad accident. A serious accident," William said. "You didn't answer your phone. Uncle Bill said you'd have to be dead and buried before you'd stop answering your damn cell phone."

 

Mulder recalled Scully's brother using that phrase over the years. "Uncle Bill's a horse's ass, buddy. My phone's broken, but I'm okay. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere," he promised, and he meant every word.

 

The world wouldn't end when William was eleven and a half. Mulder wouldn't let the sky fall or the seas boil. He had enough pieces to fit the puzzle together, and he had a date. May 2012. He needed a place to stand and an army of G-men - and faith and love - and he'd save the world. Present company included.

 

"Why are you out of bed?" Scully's voice demanded.

 

Mulder gave William one more kiss and carried the boy against his chest as he walked to Scully. "The nurse said I didn't have to stay in bed. I have to stay in the unit."

 

"Well, I'm a medical doctor, and I want you in bed."

 

"Well, we're parents, and you're gonna have to wait," he teased, and gave her cheek a kiss.

 

She smiled obligingly, but her eyes moved over him, anxious and clearly wanting to tell William to get down.

 

Mulder understood her disbelief, but once the druggy haze lifted he'd been up and around. He'd been stiff. He felt frostbitten and hung-over, but those wore off. Besides the hospital bed making his back hurt and his throat being irritated from the ventilator - and the threat of terminal boredom - he felt okay. Before she left to get William, Scully told him to rest. Instead, he answered questions from a legion of doctors, fidgeted, channel-surfed, annoyed the nurses, and watched a hole in the elevator doors while he waited for her to return.

 

As he carried William back to the room, Mulder told her, "If you want me to stay in bed in a hospital, the trick is to refuse to take out the catheter."

 

"Let's hope that bit of information is never relevant again. How do you feel?"

 

"My throat is still sore, I'm hungry, and I have a bad case of cabin fever. And I'm not wearing any underwear. Did you bring me some clothes?"

 

She held up William's backpack.

 

He showered earlier, washing off the last of the dirt and dried blood, and a nurse found him another hospital gown and a pair of pajama bottoms. He didn't have shoes, and the hospital socks were, of course, two sizes too small.

 

"What about a working cell phone, my badge, my wallet, my watch, and my other gun?" he asked as he took the backpack from her. He had William slide down, and Mulder headed for the bathroom. "Have you talked with Skinner?"

 

Dana followed him, her hands on her hips. "I have talked with the Deputy Director. He's working with the SAC."

 

"Agent Reyes?"

 

"She's flying out with the Deputy Director."

 

"I don't need her in Oregon; I need her in Arizona. What time is the next briefing?"

 

"I have no idea."

 

Mulder glanced up from rooting through the backpack. "Are you going to close the door, or am I putting on a show for the whole ICU?"

 

She closed the bathroom door with her in the bathroom with him. In the next room, the hospital bed whirred as William played with the controller.

 

Mulder put on a clean pair of boxer shorts and jeans as she scrutinized him. She folded her arms and parked herself in the doorway as if she planned to corral him.

 

"Well, can you call the SAC and ask when the next briefing is?" he requested. "I'd call, but the phone beside my bed only makes local calls. I'd call collect from the payphone, but every number I once knew is now two-zero-two, beep-beep-beep, be-boop-boop-beep. I'm shoeless, penniless, unarmed, stranded in some Portland hospital, and separated from my cell phone for the first time since 1988." He stepped close to her, leaned down, and offered his neck. "Check my lymph nodes. I feel schizophrenia or anaphylactic shock setting in."

 

"Mulder, I'm getting the distinct impression you think you're leaving this hospital."

 

"I am leaving this hospital.  I'd hoped for a lift."

 

In the same tone she used with William, Scully informed him, "You're not going anywhere, mister. I want you in bed."

 

"Scully, I'm happy I'm not dead, too, and I hate to disappoint you - but seriously, William's in the next room and the alien Redcoats are coming. The bow-chicka-bow-wow will have to wait."

 

"The bow-chicka what?" she echoed tersely. "Mulder, we came to visit you, not take you home. Who said you could leave the hospital?"

 

"I'm fine. Scully, I feel fine," he assured her. Still shirtless, he turned in a circle, showing her all angles. "All systems normal. In fact, I think those anti-virals even cured my athlete's foot. I'm fine and I wanna get out of here."

 

"But you shouldn't be fine," she insisted. "There should be residual-"

 

Before she launched into her medical litany or insisted on more CT scans and blood work, he held out his left hand to her. He still had four stitches in his palm, but in pink, normal skin. He had no cut, no scab, and no scar - as if the wound was never there.

 

As she stared at him, Mulder turned in a circle again, showing her his bare torso under the sickly yellow light of the hospital bathroom. He offered her both arms, palms turned up. He had bald places on his chest from the heart monitor pads, and purple marks from the IV and blood work, but no scrapes or bruises.

 

Dana covered her mouth with her hand, eyes wide. She gestured for him to let her see his hand again, which he did.

 

"How is this healed?" she asked. "I saw this cut five days ago. That's impossible. I saw the marks on your face and shoulder in the forest. You had abrasions, lacerations. How is it possible?"

 

"Some things you have to take on faith," he told her.

 

She checked his hand yet again, as if she might have made a mistake the first two times.

 

"It's me," Mulder assured her. "I'm not a super-soldier."

 

He showed her the back of his neck in case it might make her feel better, though he doubted it.

 

As he finished dressing, he offered, "I can limp, if it would help."

 

"My God, Mulder."

 

"It's 'Mulder.' You don't have to address me as a deity."

 

He checked the man in the mirror, who looked pretty good given three deaths, a couple abductions, and forty-five years on a planet scheduled for imminent alien colonization. The nurse hadn't been able to locate a razor, so the row of scars showed in the stubble on each cheek. He waited for the hollow wrongness or the clammy sense of helplessness to descend, but it didn't. Instead, for the first time in years, he felt completely calm. Like a still sea after the storm passed. Take stock of the damage, plot a course, set sail - and don't look back.

 

He wondered if the serenity came courtesy of Jeremiah Smith, too.

 

"Are you gonna give me my guns back?" he asked, turning away from the mirror. "At least one gun?"

 

He opened the bathroom door and found his room was the cockpit of a spaceship for their six-year-old space cadet. William adjusted the hospital bed, with the boy in it, to launch position. Monitors flashed and beeped angrily; William must have entered the self-destruct code or taken a direct hit.

 

Scully stood rooted to the bathroom floor, staring at Mulder like she had the wrong room. The wrong patient. The wrong universe. As if she couldn't find anything else to say, she repeated, "Mulder, we came to see you, not to take you home."

 

"Good, because I'm not going home. I'm taking you and William to the airport and I'm going back to Bellefleur."

 

If a Guinness World Record existed for maintaining an expression of total disbelief the longest, she'd beat it. "You're going back to Bellefleur?" she echoed, following him. "You're going from the ICU to Bellefleur?"

 

"I thought I might drive through Burger King on the way."

 

Mulder silenced the monitors, adjusted the hospital bed to a humane position, and waved to the anxious ICU nurse there was no emergency. They had an unsupervised little boy preparing for blastoff or a bombing run on The Death Star.

 

"Absolutely not," Scully said, recovering her poise. "If you're dead-set on leaving the hospital, the three of us are getting on an airplane and going home. You need to rest. Let someone else catch your psychic vampire."

 

"Remember saying you know the man you love?" he asked. "If you do, you know I can't go home."

 

"They have my description, and the FBI is all over Bellefleur. Why do you need to go back? What are you doing?"

 

"I love you and I'm saving the world. Is that not defined and well-planned enough for you? We'll work in the bow-chicka-bow-wow on the fly. Or on the bathroom sink. Whatever. But later. There's a demigod in Bellefleur who I really, really want to talk to."

 

She had her old “you're not serious” expression, which usually precipitated her following him into a military base or haunted house or some other place neither of them should be. They remained Mulder and Scully, saving the world: fifteen years older, with a six-year-old son, and a whole lot of water under the bridge. Some of which she remembered.

 

"Well, I'm driving," she insisted.

 

****

 

In the back seat, William dozed with a Burger King crown on his head and a French fry still clutched in his hand. William didn't take naps - not in years - but he probably hadn’t slept well at Mrs. Bahe's house the previous two nights.

 

Mulder yawned and rolled his neck, getting the kinks out. He didn't remember drifting off, but he'd been out more than an hour, according to the dashboard clock.

 

"I see how you're fine," Scully observed as Mulder blinked at her.

 

They passed the last of the Portland suburbs, and the highway narrowed to a straight, two-lane, westward stretch bordered by the forest. While he'd slept, she found a radio station playing classic rock rather than country or the fishing report, and so the Eagles serenaded them from 1980 and the Santa Monica Auditorium.

 

"I was mostly dead all yesterday," he reminded her, and ran his tongue over his teeth, moistening them. "Don't be harsh."

 

He started to check his wristwatch before he remembered he wasn't wearing it. Scully said she'd left his watch at the motel. He didn't need it, but his arm felt oddly light without it.

 

Dana kept her eyes on the road, doing exactly the speed limit. She'd changed clothes and showered earlier, when she left the hospital to pick up William. She probably hadn't slept in days, though. There was no point to suggesting she let him drive. She wouldn't let Mulder have his shoulder holster or trust him to operate William's booster seat. Hell, he was surprised she let him order for himself at the drive-thru.

 

She told him, "I got a text message. Deputy Director Skinner says the briefing is at five. He said they're expecting you." She adjusted her hands on the steering wheel. "What are you going to tell them? Please, not the demigod vampire story, Mulder. No, I don't have a scientific explanation for what happened, but please don't get in front of the Deputy Director of the FBI and announce a psychic vampire demigod attacked you."

 

"Why would I tell Skinner that? That's not what happened."

 

Her shoulders returned to their normal altitude. "Good."

 

Mulder took a sip from the cup of watered-down diet soda in the console, and said, "Tell me again about the runaway star in the constellation Ophiuchus - the one with the planet."

 

He could tell she was tired. She had to think before she asked, "Do you mean Barnard's star?"

 

He nodded. " You said it has a planet and the potential for interstellar exploration since it's so close to Earth."

 

"Mulder, I don't remember telling you."

 

"I remember, but I don't recall the rest of the story."

 

"Barnard's star is the fourth closest star to our sun. Six light-years. It's a red dwarf invisible to the naked eye but likely one of the oldest stars in the Milky Way. You're correct; Barnard's star was once believed to have a Jupiter-like planet orbiting it. That's been disproved by recent observations, though."

 

"Firmly disproved?" he asked. "There is no habitable planet orbiting it?"

 

Her chin moved up and down a few degrees. "I can check the latest literature, but I know they eliminated a gaseous giant. There could still be a small, rocky planet like Earth - and in fact, there should be - but Hubble's never found one. Not orbiting Barnard's star or any star in Ophiuchus. If your suspect is trying to phone home, there's no one there to answer."

 

Disappointed, Mulder slouched down in the passenger seat to fiddle with his hospital ID bracelet and reformulate.

 

"That could fit your theory, though," she speculated. "You're still thinking the suspect performs ritualistic murders in an attempt to send a signal to an extraterrestrial world?"

 

"I am, but my suspect isn't a Heaven's Gate nut job. Why would he signal a planet not there?"

 

"Right. I forgot. Your suspect is the rational sort of serial killer."

 

"My suspect was an alien slave to an overlord class of gray aliens," he explained. "When the overlords left Earth, he stayed behind. Banished or thought killed. He's been here for millennia, trying to find a way to fight his former captors upon their return. But he thinks he can't, and the return date is fast approaching, so his next best option is to send out a distress beacon. In his most common human form, he's about six-foot one, one-seventy, gray hair, blue eyes, late-fifties, and last seen wearing a green ranger uniform in a clearing about ten miles that way." Mulder pointed as they passed the turnoff to the forest road. "Jeremiah Smith. We aren't BFF's, but he seems like a nice guy."

 

"Except for killing fourteen innocent people in the last two years."

 

"About that... I want Agent Reyes to check with the Oriabi tribe. I'm not sure the first seven victims are still dead. And has anyone checked to see if Ginger was my suspect impersonating the late Mr. Roy's late dog? Because that would fit my profile."

 

She sighed dejectedly. "I'll tell the Deputy Director you've incurred a head trauma."

 

"In the legend, Ophiuchus became such a powerful healer he healed even the dead. The gods feared he'd make the human race immortal, so Zeus struck him down and put his image in the sky as a reminder. Memento mori: we all must die."

 

"Mulder, I know the myth. What I don't know is how you think it's relevant to this investigation. Your attacker was female. About five-feet seven inches, brown hair, late twenties. Are you saying she didn't commit these homicides? She happened to be at the same crime scene and randomly attacked you? Are we tracking a transgender individual or a transvestite? Being genetically male would explain her unusual strength. Partially," she added.

 

"I thought about it this morning," he said as if she hadn't spoken. "While I waited for you to spring me from the joint. Who did Ophiuchus heal causing him to be struck down?"

 

"In the myth?" she said incredulously.

 

"Myths originate from something. In the Gnostic gospels, the star men mingled their seed with human women and were struck down for it. The first emperor of China was said to be conceived with an alien. The Virgin Mary had an encounter with an angel, and discovered she carried the son of God. Jesus Christ was literally not the son of man, not of this Earth. I'm not being glib, Dana," he remembered to add. "By definition, Christ was a divine alien-human hybrid. The theme repeats over and over. It had to be an Earth woman Smith loved so much he risked everything, defying the laws of nature and his overlords. He can be anyone he wants, but he chooses the form of a man. For a man, in the end, it's almost always about a woman."

 

"That's what you're going to tell Deputy Director Skinner?"

 

"Men conquer countries for women. We build cathedrals, paint masterpieces, wage wars. Give up all our comforts, sleep out in the rain. I ended up with two pierced earlobes and purple hair over a woman who should have her own subsection in the DSM. Men die for women, and we live for them. We'd trade our world - like Jeremiah Smith did. Don't ever underestimate what a man will do to hold on to love."

 

"Mulder, you are personifying this case," she responded. "You've acted erratically since we arrived, and you're confabulating the forest ranger who helped save your life with the woman who attacked you. And your profile... Something happened in the forest I can't explain, but I don't understand why you think there's a connection to the Ophiuchus legend or to some doomsday UFO cult. This is your guilt and anger and trauma - and all perfectly understandable - but you are about to commit career suicide."

 

Mulder shifted in the passenger seat and asked, "Seriously, have you seen our Earth women?"

 

Despite the lovely spring day outside, the temperature in the rental car dropped to a level best measured on the Kelvin scale.

 

He turned the radio up.

 

She turned it down again.

 

"The Deputy Director wanted me to tell you Mr. Byers and Mr. Frohike are with him. They're consultants," she said, sounding as if the last word needed air quotes. "He didn't mention Mr. Langly."

 

"Oh - Mr. Langly's not currently permitted to leave the state of Maryland without giving his probation officer a week's notice."

 

"Possession with intent to distribute?" she guessed.

 

"Public intoxication and a public hotel lobby with his pants down. I could have gotten the charges dropped altogether if he'd stopped screaming 'death to capitalist pigs' at the Atlanta cops."

 

"Are you serious?" she asked. "These are the people you let William be around? They're the most paranoid men I've ever encountered, and now one of them is a convicted criminal?"

 

"He's on probation; he's not a sex offender. Well, technically, he's not a sex offender once he successfully completes his probation and his record is expunged."

 

"I don't care," she said irritably, as she drove. "Clearly, your judgment is impaired, and I don't want William around a criminal."

 

"A criminal who cleaned a virus off your laptop and convinced the IRS to stop hassling your baby brother," he reminded her. "You've spent more time in a jail cell than Langly. He had too much to drink over Labor Day and had a lapse in judgment."

 

She pursed her lips. "You were in Atlanta over Labor Day. Mom invited you to Charlie's new place with Will and me, but you said you were out of town for work."

 

"I was working. The lizard man case."

 

"How convenient." Her mouth twitched. "There was no lizard man case, was there?"

 

"There was a shifty-lookin' guy at Dragon-Con with tattooed lizard scales and a loin cloth," he confessed. "There was also a bartender dressed as Seven of Nine, and a drink called a Darth Vader... Jägermeister should have an upper-age drinking limit as well as a lower one. No one over 25 allowed. I don't clearly remember calling you, but I woke up to Frohike spooning me and Langly taking advantage of his one phone call from jail. You know, a typical boys' night out."

 

She smiled and, even bone tired, her smile lit up the car better than a UFO's tractor beam.

 

"I do love you, Earth woman," he told her impulsively. "I loved you during our first case in Bellefleur. I loved you when we had William, and I've loved you this past week. I loved you as I walked into your hospital room six years ago and you didn't recognize me, and I loved you when I opened a bathroom drawer three years ago and realized your blow dryer wasn't there anymore. It's been a hundred variants on love, but it's always been real, and it's always been you, whether you knew it or not."

 

He waited for her to respond in kind, but she didn't. Her smile faded. Caught off-guard and feeling naked, Mulder slowly started deflating. He'd thought they'd catch a demigod, fly home, hatch a plan to save humanity, and plot a course for fairly happily ever after, captain. As the seconds passed, he wondered if he read too much into a woman going to bed with him and having a child by him and fighting with Death for exclusive ownership of him.

 

Again.

 

If their lives had a soundtrack, crickets would have chirped. Instead, on the car radio, The Rolling Stones mournfully sang "Ruby Tuesday."

 

"I do," Mulder repeated awkwardly. "Do with that what you will."

 

He watched through the windshield as the car devoured the road ahead of them, rapidly taking them wherever they were going.

 

"I destroyed their lab," he added three minutes later once he couldn't stand the silence. "They used a reproductive clinic as a front for a consortium lab. They had ova from your second abduction. They had genetic material from me. Not from in vitro but collected during my abduction. Very much without my consent." Mulder swallowed, his throat still tender. He'd never told her before, and he knew Agent Reyes hadn't told Dana, either. "After you came back, I found the lab and I destroyed it. All their research," he added, working on the in-for-a-penny theory. "Their cloning experiments. Vaccines, embryos, chips, records - everything went up in flames one night while you and William slept. Before we left for the Vineyard."

 

He examined her face for some flicker of emotion but didn't see one. The silence continued to pile up on her side of the car, wave after wave of it, like the red-shift of a damaged heart.

 

"I wanted it to stop," he continued hoarsely, his voice roughened by emotion. "You wanted normal. I wanted normal. We deserved normal, and I wanted someone to pay for what happened to us. I loved you, but I couldn't stop Them from abducting you again and again, or from coming for William, when he was born. I couldn't be there when you needed me. I couldn't give you Your Mulder back, but I could pick up a fire ax and destroy whatever permutation of our genetics those men created. That night, I never thought one day we might need the consortium's research. You might need another chip. Or you might want the stolen ova for another baby. I've thought about it a lot, though, since then."

 

He stopped speaking. He'd run out of plot points and she had no frame of reference for them, anyway. Reading Emily Sim's case file wasn't watching an innocent child die. To Scully, cancer meant a yearly appointment with her oncologist; to Mulder, cancer came millimeters from taking her once and lurked hungrily in her body, awaiting a second chance. Knowledge didn't equal experience, and without those memories, she'd never understand the hot, clarified rage he felt the night at The Omega Center.

 

She never looked at their beautiful son - still sound asleep in the backseat with a smear of ketchup on his cheek - and prayed those “Jedi mind powers” wouldn't ever kick in.

 

"You said you were with those Gunmen people," she said neutrally. "I remember how worried you were about leaving William with me for an evening, but... You seemed different. Different from the FBI profiler who brought me home from the hospital and introduced me to our baby. Until that evening, you'd seemed like a brilliant, passionate man. Quirky and paranoid, but you’d watched me be abducted, and been abducted yourself. I could envision myself valuing you as a friend and partner, but..." She trailed off again. "I knew you loved me and you loved our son, but that night, you were darker. Dangerous. You were a man I could have been recklessly in love with, and had a child with, and lost. For a moment, before you left, everything made sense. You and I made sense. That was the night you destroyed the lab, wasn't it?"

 

Mulder nodded.

 

"The next morning, you were my son’s brilliant, kind, noble father again. The Oxford-educated ISU profiler with the Volvo and the balanced stock portfolio, but you had cuts on your forearms," she said. "The kind of wounds people get from flying glass."

 

"Tanks. At The Omega Center, they grew embryos in big fish tanks. They had ova and semen in refrigerated drawers - like a steel card catalogue labeled 'innocent people whose lives we destroyed.'"

 

After a few seconds, she said quietly, "They didn't destroy us. We're still here. They didn't destroy us."

 

"They came damn close," he responded. "What I did - I did more harm than good, in the long run. You're right, though. In the end, no one destroyed us except us. Except me."

 

With her hands at ten and two on the wheel and both eyes on the highway, she said, "You shouldn't have left."

 

He'd left on multiple occasions, but regardless of the timeframe she meant, he said, "I'm sorry. You're right; I shouldn't have. You're not the only one who..." He exhaled loudly. "Water under the bridge."

 

Mick Jagger kept singing, she kept driving and not looking at him and not saying anything. Mulder started picking at his hospital ID bracelet again.

 

"He is fire," she said. She watched the road and sounded like she was quoting something. "Beautiful and dangerous and unpredictably destructive. It surrounds me and engulfs me, and for one wonderful night I let it. Then, as dawn approached, I confessed I didn't know what came next, and he accepted even that. The phone rings now, again and again, an electronic beacon of distress from a man who woke up alone, thinking he did something wrong. Thinking he failed me by being who he is, when what completes me is who he is. I was thoughtless in going to him, and now I am cruel in avoiding him, and he doesn't deserve either. All he wants is for me to love him as bravely as he loves me, but I am not sure I can be that brave. If I say that to him - and I do not know what else to say - he will accept it and go on. He will conceal from me the wound where I have ripped his heart out yet again."

 

Taken aback, Mulder quipped, "The second Twilight book?"

 

"My journal entry about the time of Will's conception. I have evidence suggesting you're the 'he' I wrote about."

 

"It would seem irrefutable," he agreed.

 

It should be her turn to talk, so he waited.

 

He would have never described Scully as thoughtless or cruel in loving him, but he would never have characterized his love for her as brave, either. Mulder wondered if she had a journal entry for the day his mother died, or for all the failed in vitro attempts, or for those months during his abduction as she searched for him. For when he didn’t come to the hospital after William’s birth, or the day she met with Kersh and agreed to a brief undercover assignment in exchange for Mulder’s reinstatement on the X-files.

 

A minute passed, and a mile. Five miles. "Ruby Tuesday" became "The House of the Rising Sun" and "American Pie." They'd found a good radio station but lost their way.

 

The miles and moments slipped by, and whatever she started to say didn't get said. He resorted to watching the guardrail.

 

She did ask, "You left the hospital AMA so you can brief the FBI on Percy Sledge lyrics, Roman mythology, psychic vampires, an undead dog, and how Phoebe broke your heart when you were twenty-two?"

 

"It's a great song, Scully." He shifted again. "How did you know I was talking about Phoebe earlier? Your journal?"

 

Her forehead crinkled. "The old video tape. The one I made after your abduction," she answered. "On the tape, I'm talking about you having your ears pierced to impress a girl, and I say her name was Phoebe."

 

"Oh."

 

The crinkles smoothed and she tilted her head to one side. "Was that Inspector Phoebe Greene from Scotland Yard who asked us to investigate the pyrokinetic case?"

 

"One and the same," he admitted. "You know me. Do you think I learned my lesson the first time around?"

 

She shook her head in tired disbelief. "You love as stubbornly as your suspect does, Agent Mulder."

 

"We're an undying breed, Agent Scully," he teased.

 

"I am no longer Agent Scully," she reminded him.

 

"Sure you are."

 

In response, she took his hand, holding it as she drove. The radio played, the rental car's tires hummed against the asphalt, and outposts of civilization started to appear as they approached Bellefleur and the western crossroads for the end of the world.

 

****

 

The Deputy Director of the FBI was one degree removed from President Bush, the highest position in the Bureau not requiring political appointment. Skinner oversaw 10,000 agents, reams of policy, and hundreds of investigations, from Internet fraud to counter-terrorism to child porn. The AD's and SAC's reported to him, and, as the head of the ISU, so did Mulder.

 

Dana rarely had direct contact with Skinner. When she did, she stood ramrod straight and said “sir” a lot, as in "It depends on who you ask, sir," after Skinner wanted to know if Mulder was supposed to be out of the hospital.

 

The Deputy Director didn't personally head field investigations - not even if a little blond girl went missing live on the Fox Network. Nor did he need to fly Frohike and Byers to Oregon as on-site consultants. The Gunmen arrived with crates of electronic equipment - little of it legal - and a Tauntaun sleeping bag they liberated from Mulder's hall closet. Nor did Skinner need to wait until Saturday to fly out. He had the FBI air fleet at his disposal; his team could have been in Bellefleur on Thursday afternoon. Instead, he elected to watch and wait, and Skinner hadn't waited on the shape-shifter to reappear.  

 

Bringing in Jeremiah Smith could wait. Skinner had focused on keeping William safe. Making sure Scully had the resources she needed to treat the retro-virus. And making sure, if the time came, she didn't have to bring Mulder's body home alone. Again.

 

From the moment Scully called Skinner on Thursday, FBI agents guarded Mrs. Bahe in case the bounty hunter tried to take William. Frohike set up some electronic sensor network around Bellefleur, and Byers monitored the satellite data for any UFO activity. Agent Reyes briefed the Portland agents via satellite, tried to talk some sense into Scully, and, at Mulder's request, left DC this morning on short notice - a great feat with a small child, Mulder knew. Agent Doggett held down the fort on the East Coast, but he sent a file summarizing everything the FBI had on Jeremiah Smith and the bounty hunter, including some recent trivia even Mulder hadn't known.

 

Good friends. Mulder and Scully had good friends, whether Scully remembered them or not.

 

After Agent Reyes' and Scully's rental car pulled away from the Bellefleur deputies' headquarters, Mulder asked Skinner, "Isn't it sexual harassment if you order a female agent into bed?"

 

Reyes headed to catch a plane to Arizona, and Scully headed to the motel for eight mandated hours of shut-eye. Dana had argued she was fine, but Skinner didn't back down. She left without remembering to give Mulder his badge, shoulder holster, or a list of instructions for taking care of William. She expected Mulder to parent his own son for twelve straight hours with only six years' experience and FBI academy training. Scully's declaration of “fine” must have been in the dead-on-her-feet sense of the word.

 

"You look as worn-out as she does. If I thought you'd listen, I'd order you to bed, too, Agent Mulder," Skinner answered in his stony-faced way.

 

"An alternative and perfectly acceptable lifestyle, sir. I'm flattered. Taken, I think, but flattered."

 

William ran down the sidewalk with his arms outstretched, pretending to be a pterodactyl. Byers went ahead to find the minister and do some Baptist recon, and, after giving Mulder an uncomfortably full-frontal hug and saying he had more lives than an alley cat, Frohike went in search of pie.

 

"She's covering for you," Skinner told Mulder as they followed William.

 

Bellefleur had three churches, but the one with a marquee sat at the end of the block. As they walked toward it, William circled trees, the VFW's flag pole, a planter, and a fire hydrant in search of prey.

 

"Scully said the bounty hunter was armed when I shot him?"

 

"She did," Skinner said.

 

Mulder nodded. She was on edge about something - besides the obvious - and one word, “armed,” meant the difference between self-defense and murder. "I figured she would."

 

"The FBI hasn't found your attacker's weapon. Or body."

 

"Imagine that," Mulder said, sounding falsely naive.

 

"How are we going to catch a creature who can impersonate anyone?" Skinner wanted to know. "Two creatures. Unless you killed him, the bounty hunter will come after Jeremiah Smith."

 

"You didn't bring the secret alien decoder ring?"

 

Skinner didn't answer.

 

In the drugstore parking lot they passed two of the agents who arrived from DC with Skinner. They'd been members of the SWAT team raid on The Church of the 13th Sign. They were silent, seasoned men who didn't need convincing UFO's existed.

 

William made two laps around them, flapped warningly, and moved on. William was an infant during the raid - a tiny responsibility in a baby carrier Mulder carted around as numbly and awkwardly as men held their wives' purses.

 

Mulder saw the two SWAT agents watch William as if taking stock of how many years had passed.

 

"You're calling her 'Scully,'" Skinner observed. "I haven't heard you do that in a long time."

 

Mulder put his hands in his pockets and nodded.

 

"When you walked in and said 'Find me a preacher man, Walter,' I thought you had something besides the case in mind."

 

Mulder had William bank left toward the church, but he didn't answer Skinner. Truthfully, he didn't know what came next between him and Scully. He suspected she still didn't either. At the moment, he had to ensure all of them had a 'next.'

 

The lights were on and the door to Bellefleur Baptist Church stood open, suggesting Byers was inside with the minister. On Thursday morning the marquee listed the funeral services for the first two Bellefleur victims; now it advertised tomorrow's sermon, and the cemetery had a fresh grave. Mulder had called from HQ, and the minister said the church secretary, who did the marquee, was visiting her sister. The minister didn't have the sister's number, but he'd hunt for the key to the marquee if it helped out the FBI.

 

"Scully kissed me once," Skinner said, studying the church's steeple against the late afternoon sky as they waited. "Years ago. Long before you two..." He nodded toward William. "I know she doesn't remember, but she did."

 

"She kissed you or you kissed her?" Mulder wanted to know.

 

"She kissed me. I was an innocent bystander."

 

"What'd she do? Get a stepladder?"

 

Skinner considered. "She’s a beautiful woman, and she smells nice. I may have stooped." He glanced at the church again, and at William soaring around the lawn. "I remember her being pregnant with him and not telling anyone and searching for you. Finding you... I- I wish-" he said. "I wish she remembered we aren’t strangers. I'm on her side."

 

Mulder filled the silence by watching William run around the lawn in big figure eights, making “caw” noises and pretending he was death from above to Cretaceous mammals.

 

Eventually, Byers emerged from the church with a battered cardboard box. "These are the old letters. The minister thinks the secretary must have the new letters at home, but we found these, and he's called someone from First Presbyterian to bring over their letters," Byers said. "She's on her way."

 

A silver-haired minister in a flannel shirt and pressed blue jeans followed at a leisurely pace. He unlocked the cover of the marquee, and the hinges squealed as it opened.

 

Mulder took the dusty, disorganized box of letters. "William, come help Daddy," he called, and his son landed on the cement slab in front of the marquee. Mulder set the box on the edge of a brick planter. "Find the L's."

 

Arms/wings still outstretched, William the Pterodactyl adopted a bowlegged stance as he waddled over to the cardboard box.

 

"This will go faster if you evolve thumbs, son."

 

William complied, and with help from Byers, started to lay out the old plastic letters. They'd yellowed with age. Many had points missing from the back. The Sunday sermon was advertised as 'Blessed be the peacemakers,' which Mulder cannibalized. He picked over the old letters, chose the most usable ones, and pressed them into the velvet folds of the marquee.

 

Skinner's cell phone rang and he moved away to answer it. Mulder hoped Dana might call, but from the sound of the conversation, Skinner spoke with his assistant. The deputy directing of the FBI continued from three time zones away.

 

"I need another A and two more T's," Mulder said.

 

"I have them, Agent Mulder," a familiar woman's voice called. "We have brand new letters."

 

Mulder looked back and saw Teresa Hoese walking toward them, with her daughter Stella beside her. Teresa carried a shoebox-sized plastic container and looked like her old self. She wore a loose, floral-print dress, a pale pink cardigan, and even makeup.

 

"Are you from First Presbyterian?" Byers asked her, over-eager to do his part. Not counting Dragon-Con and a few more tries at infiltrating Def-Con, this was The Gunmen's biggest adventure since The Omega Center.

 

"No, Byers. She's a random good letter Samaritan." Mulder looked to Teresa and said, "I'm glad to see you're feeling better."

 

"I am, Agent Mulder," she answered. "Thank you. I heard you were injured. Badly injured."

 

"Scully's a good doctor; I got better," he said easily. He asked, "Have you seen him again?"

 

"No," she said softly. Her throat moved as she swallowed. "Have you seen her?"

 

"No, but I've been dead, so..." Mulder glanced at Byers, at Teresa again, and changed the subject. "I bet you two know each other in cyberspace. John Byers, this is Teresa Hoese and her daughter Stella."

 

Byers thrust out his hand, but Teresa had to give the box of letters to Stella before she shook it. "I'm John Fitzgerald Byers. I'm working with the FBI on this investigation. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Lone Gunmen," he recited. "I'm JFK63 on our message board. I'm a senior moderator."

 

"They're all senior moderators. He's also in charge of address labels, and, every third month, stapling," Mulder added sarcastically. "They used to do rock-scissors-paper-lizard-Spock over who staples, but now they have a chart."

 

"I'm Stella by Starlight. I do know you, JFK63," Teresa responded, not seeming to hear Mulder. She nodded to her daughter and said needlessly, "This is Stella."

 

"Hello, Stella. Let, let, let me take those letters for you and…” He took the box gallantly, set it atop the brick planter, and apparently forgot about it. Historically, Byers fell in love the way other men fell into abandoned mineshafts: unexpectedly and life-threateningly, and, within seconds, in so deep it took a special team with heavy equipment to extract him.

 

Teresa ducked her head shyly and tucked her dark hair behind her ear. She looked at Byers with those kind brown eyes.

 

Mulder winked at William. William squinted up his face trying to wink back. Behind them, Mulder heard Teresa blurt out, "I have a mental illness. I have to take medicine."

 

"Have you had a full-body CT scan to check for implants?" Byers said earnestly.

 

Mulder made a mental note to warn Byers about his future father-in-law, and resumed work on the marquee.

 

While Skinner continued giving orders over his cell phone and Byers and Teresa made goo-goo eyes at each other, Mulder closed the case. He stepped back, admiring his work. Half the letters were butter-yellow, half were bright white. The R propped up the broken G, and his second P was a lower-case D flipped over.

 

'I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin’

 

"I know my scripture, and that's not in there, son," the minister commented, sounding curious rather than upset. Mulder had asked if he could use the church's marquee to put up a verse; he hadn't specified a verse from the King James Bible. "Is it from the Jewish Bible?"

 

"Uh, no," Mulder answered, and put his hands in his pockets again. "It's from the Gospel of Enoch. One of the Gnostic gospels."

 

The minister pushed up the sleeves on his flannel shirt, revealing a medic alert bracelet and a faded Semper Fi tattoo. "It's going to mean something to the killer? This'll help the FBI catch him?"

 

"I'm hoping so," Mulder answered.

 

William transformed into a flying dinosaur again, and Stella soared with him in the cemetery beside the church. Byers and Teresa traded anecdotes about shape-shifters and UFOs. Skinner sat on the church steps, still on his cell phone, but talking with someone who made him smile. That wasn't anyone at the FBI.

 

The minister nodded. "What was the great sin?"

 

"Falling in love with a woman he couldn't have. Or rather, he shouldn't have."

 

"That'll do it every time," the old minister confirmed.

 

****

 

In the deputies' cramped headquarters, Melvin Frohike, Walter Skinner, and Special Agent Allen Martelli clustered around a laptop, the three ingredients for a perfect storm of testosterone. Frohike pecked on the keyboard, Martelli loomed, and Skinner did his impatient unhappy dance. Mulder kept an eye on William and stayed out of the way. He needed a teenager to spot him if he used a Xerox machine these days, so he had no expertise to offer until someone got the slide show program working.

 

If they'd let him use a projector and actual slides, there wouldn't be a problem.

 

"Don't crowd me, stretch," Frohike warned Martelli again.

 

"Would you let me do it, old-timer? It's not even - You're not even in the right window. That won't work."

 

Frohike ignored him and kept typing.

 

"That won't work," Agent Martelli repeated irritably.

 

"Lots of porn on this hard drive," Frohike responded without looking away from the little screen. "Whose laptop is this?"

 

Skinner glanced at Martelli. Martelli's tan face flushed.

 

"You're gonna tell the Deputy Director that's not true," Martelli hissed as Skinner moved away to answer his cell phone. "It's my work laptop. I will make you sorry, old man."

 

Frohike stopped typing. He looked up at the young FBI agent and promised, "I will rain the pain on your credit rating, stretch. Back off."

 

Martelli exhaled like an angry bull but retreated to a safe distance and let Frohike work. Pretty Agent Smithson came over, and Frohike seemed delighted to let her lean in and help him.

 

The Deputy Director returned, holding his phone out to Mulder. "It's Agent-" Skinner started, but corrected, "It's Dr. Scully."

 

Mulder put the phone to his ear. "Special Agent Spooky."

 

"Am I interrupting the briefing?"

 

He imitated a long electronic beeeep. "We're standing by due to technical difficulties. They want me to use Power Point. The slides are on Agent Reyes' memory stick, but I've pushed a button and done something very, very wrong."

 

"Has anyone used the term 'Luddite' yet?" Scully's voice asked.

 

"No, but I think it's the wrong time to brag about my Laserdisc collection." Mulder sat on the deputy's desk, letting his legs dangle. "I'm in charge of saving the world and watching the kid; you're supposed to be sleeping. What's up?"

 

"I woke up thinking about something. Something we talked about. Are you somewhere you can talk for a moment?"

 

Mulder looked around the crowded bunker, not thrilled at the prospect of discussing a second baby or the status of their relationship in front of four deputies, ten FBI agents, two of the Lone Gunmen, Skinner, and William. "Okay. Sure."

 

"This afternoon, you asked about Barnard's star and its potential satellites. About Earth-like planets. That's what you meant, wasn't it? Extrasolar planets habitable by intelligent life?"

 

"Right. Class M planets in Ophiuchus Jeremiah Smith might signal. But you said there aren't any."

 

"Mulder, once again, 'class M planet' is a Star Trek term. The correct term is 'Goldilocks planet.'"

 

Mulder waited for a punch line, but there didn't seem to be one.

 

"To be habitable to life, a planet needs to be just right. It needs to be composed of certain elements," she said. "It needs a stable orbit around a certain kind of star. It has to be old enough to allow evolution, yet temperate enough to have liquid water and an atmosphere. In all likelihood, it needs a satellite like our Moon, and it doesn't hurt to have a gaseous giant like Jupiter intercepting most of the space debris. It's called the 'rare Earth' theory. Our Earth is rare because it's just right for intelligent life to develop. If even one thing was different, it would be a frozen rock or a ball of poisonous gas."

 

"Years ago, you told me Barnard's star had the potential for Earth-like planets. That's why I thought of it this morning. I didn't realize the theory was discounted."

 

She hesitated before she said, "There's a counter-point to the rare Earth theory, Mulder. The Fermi Paradox. Our planet is rare, but the galaxy is so vast even something extremely rare should appear regularly. Like, like the lottery," she said. "The odds are infinitesimal, but someone wins. Out of 400 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, there should be a few Goldilocks planets out there. The Fermi Paradox is this: if intelligent life is out there, where is it? If we're not alone, why is the universe silent?"

 

Mulder started to point out the 1977 Wow! signal and the 2004 burst of radio waves from Pisces. He got as far as saying "But-" before she interrupted him.

 

"Goldilocks planets form from stars of a certain age, which means life originating on them would be of approximately the same age. There should be a generation of intelligent life evolving at the same time, attempting communication at the same time, and, as the stars age, either becoming extinct or developing interstellar travel in search of another Goldilocks planet. In fact, with the Late Devonian and Cambrian–Ordovician extinctions, humans are almost certainly lagging behind evolutionarily."

 

A deputy gestured for Mulder to move as they tried the projector system again. Mulder stood, kept the cell phone to his ear, and made his way through the crowd to the old orange sofa, where William roosted. Mulder had made a “no dinosaurs allowed inside headquarters” rule to have his son explain a Pteranodon was not technically a dinosaur. Mulder threatened to revoke his son's Discovery Channel privileges, so William pretended to be a quietly nesting Pteranodon.

 

"This is the sort of thing you wake up thinking about?" Mulder asked, and sat down next to William. Mulder woke up thinking about Jade Blue Afterglow or sometimes a big bowl of Frosted Flakes.

 

"They aren't out there, Mulder," she continued, speaking quickly and sounding anxious. "Ten percent of the stars in our galaxy are the same age and composition as our sun, and about five to ten percent of those are in the [galactic habitable zone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitable_zone#Galactic_habitable_zone). That's still twenty to forty billion stars, Mulder. Twenty to forty billion, yet we know of less than sixty extrasolar planets. And do you know how many of those are Goldilocks planets?"

 

"I'm gonna guess 'none'?" he answered.

 

"None," she confirmed.

 

"Isn't that one of the facts used to support divine creation?" Mulder asked, unsure where this conversation was going and wary of landmines. "God created only man, as a self-aware creature, in his own image?"

 

"It doesn't say 'only' Mulder. Nowhere in the Bible does it say humankind is alone in the universe. It says God created the heavens and the earth - the spark and the quark–gluon plasma and [elementary particles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle) that expanded and cooled into our universe. Faith isn't idiocy, Mulder, or being small-minded or naive or myopic. Science and faith aren't mutually exclusive."

 

"I never said they were, Scully," he answered softly. "You have faith, and I have faith in you."

 

William crawled onto Mulder's lap and leaned back, making himself comfortable by jabbing Mulder in the gut with the boniest elbows possible. The agents and deputies arranged folding chairs and refilled coffee cups, getting ready for the briefing.

 

"I know," she answered in a quiet voice. Then, as if telling a secret, she said, "The Goldilocks planets should be there. Hundreds of them. Thousands, Mulder. Interstellar travel isn't scientifically feasible for carbon-based life, but the Hubble telescope should see them and the SETI project should hear them. Humans are the late bloomers; we should be bombarded with signals from older civilizations. I know there are scientists who argue alien life-forms are there, but either unwilling or uninterested in contact, but that's contrary to what it means to be intelligent. Once a species is self-aware, the next logical step would be to question whether they are alone in the universe. Even if you can never reach them, don't you want to know they're out there? We're not alone in the vastness of space?"

 

She couldn't see him, but he rested his hand on William's stomach and nodded. "So what are you telling me, Scully?"

 

"The Earth-like planets should be there," she repeated. "But they're not. They could have destroyed themselves - by pollution or nuclear annihilation - which is quite possible. Or-"

 

"Or another alien life-form could have colonized and destroyed them," he supplied.

 

The silence indicated she took her turn at nodding.

 

Mulder patted William's stomach absently.

 

"That's what I woke up thinking about. Barnard's star." She sounded apologetic. "I didn't mean to keep you from the briefing."

 

Still leaning back on the lumpy sofa, Mulder told her, "I don't remember the case we'd investigated, but I remember we split a six-pack of Michelob that night, so either we were off the FBI clock or had decided the case had gone to shit."

 

"That's a bad word," William piped up.

 

"You're right; it is, buddy," Mulder agreed. "Anyway, Scully, you had me sit on the hood of our rental car and look at the sky at two AM, trying to find Barnard's star. You pointed, and I squinted and craned until my neck hurt before you mentioned I couldn't see it with the naked eye. You used to find that great fun."

 

"It never happened, Mulder."

 

He smiled. "It happened. Hey - since you're awake, brush your teeth and come back to HQ. We can wait another five minutes."

 

"Do you think people will have questions about my autopsy findings? Inconclusive means inconclusive; it doesn't mean no cause-"

 

"I don't need you to present your findings; I want you as part of the team. Part of this investigation."

 

Her voice hesitated. "Mulder, unless the lab finds something, my part of this investigation is over."

 

"The stuff about the missing Goldilocks planets: that's good, Scully, and no one in this room would have known it. I don't need you here as a doctor to do autopsies and take stitches out. I need you to be Scully."

 

There was another pause during which William shifted, jabbed his elbow into Mulder's ribs again and threatened to emasculate him with his bony butt.

 

"Thank you for taking out my stitches, by the way," he added awkwardly. He inhaled and said, "Or you could get some sleep. You should get some sleep. Did you book flights for you and our pointy-jointed progeny?"

 

"Seven-thirty tomorrow morning out of Portland."

 

"Okay," Mulder said. "You want to talk to William? Tell him goodnight?"

 

She did, so he passed the cell phone to William. He slid the boy off of his lap and got up, feeling restless.

 

The agents had the window blinds closed and the projector on. The SAC and Skinner stood at the front of the briefing area. The deputies and FBI agents assembled, sitting in the metal chairs and on the desks and standing along the cinderblock wall.

 

Mulder had agents and deputies stationed at the morgue and the cemeteries. They were to watch and report back anything unusual, but not to intervene. Bodies could stay dead forever, but Mulder didn't want to interrupt an opportunity to return from the dead.

 

Agent Reyes was on her way to Oriabi Village in Arizona. She had a court order to exhume the first seven bodies if they hadn't made their way home.

 

Skinner set the wheels rolling back east - quiet conversations with friends in Congress, and an olive branch to any tattered remnants of the Syndicate. It was Operation Paperclip all over again. Work for our side and we'll wipe the slate clean. Mulder tried not to think too hard about that.

 

Mulder needed to locate Jeremiah Smith before the bounty hunter did. Keep Smith safe. Convince him humans could do more than scheme to save a select few at the expense of an ocean of innocents. Enlist Smith in some plan to help vaccinate mankind in the five years before the colonists returned. Then convince mankind - and the UN - to let mankind be saved.

 

Piece of cake.

 

At the front of the office, William and Frohike waved and slipped outside to look for ice cream, good rocks, and pretty girls. Bedtime was at eight. Frohike knew to make sure William brushed his teeth and stayed away from any alien menace. Cloning experiments, super-soldiers, UFO's and the like. In case the bounty hunter took issue with that, two of Skinners SWAT agents slipped out after them.

 

After they left, Mulder continued to look at the door for a few seconds before he realized he watched for Scully. Ten years ago, despite her protests, she'd have walked in. She'd have forgone sleep to sit in the front row and quote Einstein and FBI policy every time Mulder stopped to take a breath during the briefing.

 

The door didn't open.

 

Mulder tapped a key on the laptop, and an old photograph projected onto the wall.

 

"This is our suspect. Jeremiah Smith," Mulder told the assembled men and women. "Read Agent Doggett's summary, but long story short, he isn't human. He can raise the dead, and he can appear as anyone he chooses - which he is likely to do in the near future."

 

All heads in the room nodded. None of the DC SWAT agents would argue with him, nor would Skinner. A few of the Portland agents looked dubious, but they examined their briefing file and kept their mouths shut.

 

"Our goal is two-fold," he continued. "To protect Smith from this individual." Mulder touched the laptop again and the bounty hunter's face projected onto the white cinderblocks. "Who can also impersonate any one of us, and, if his skin is broken, secretes a toxic blood which, if it doesn’t kill you first, will at least make you wish you were dead."

 

Mulder clicked through several more old photos of the bounty hunter, and to a video clip of Smith from the Montana doomsday cult. In the grainy video, Jeremiah Smith became John Doggett as easily and seamlessly as dusk became night.

 

Agent Martelli stopped looking dubious and started looking dumbfounded.

 

"Second, we need to bring in Jeremiah Smith unharmed. Smith is the key to the future. Our survival as the human race. The clock is ticking, and he's the best - possibly the last - chance we have at fighting back. The future is not what it used to be, gentlemen - and ladies," Mulder added, nodding to the young female deputy and Agent Smithson. "But it begins tonight."

 

****

 

The ancient Babylonians believed the number seven was sacred and seven heavenly bodies existed. They named the seven days of the week after the seven planets. The Egyptians had ten-day weeks, the Romans nine, and the West Africans four, but the seven-day week carried down through the ages.

 

Each cycle of the moon lasted seven days, which meant the full moon rising over Bellefleur had reached its silvery apex. It glowed against the black sky, keeping tabs on the foolish mortals who, with all their knowledge, couldn't figure out the simplest things.

 

Life. Love. How not to be alone in the vastness of space.

 

Mulder saw the lamp turn on in Dana's motel room, and her silhouette through the window as she moved around. He watched her put her laptop away, and walk back and forth, moving things from the drawers to her luggage. After a while, the drapes closed, but a warm glow seeped out around them, and the light over her door remained on.

 

Mulder sat on one of the rubber swings in the motel's playground. He swayed back and forth idly and alternated between watching the sky and watching her window.

 

"You need to be someplace darker," Scully's voice came from the shadows.

 

He turned his head. She leaned against the ladder to the slide, wearing slacks and a baby blue v-neck sweater he remembered Scully owning in about 1997. It wasn't Jeremiah Smith or the bounty hunter. Mulder couldn't have explained how he knew, but he did.

 

"The ambient light and the full moon make for poor viewing conditions," she informed him as she walked over. "It has to be dark for you to see the stars."

 

"I've been dark," he assured her. A fellow couldn't get darker than death, and if it was dark in this life - monsters and murderers and pure evil - he'd seen that too. "You've shown me the stars enough times, I'll take them on faith." He swayed back and forth a few inches in the swing. "I like it here."

 

"Here being Bellefleur?"

 

Mulder nodded. He liked small towns where everyone knew everyone's name, the key got hidden under the flower pot, and aliens occasionally appeared in the woods. Throw in a diner with good pie, plenty of space for William to play, and Mulder getting to see His Scully once in a while, and he was content. Right up until the sky fell.

 

The breeze rustled the new tree leaves. An empty paper bag drifted across the motel parking lot, end over end, in no particular hurry.

 

Scully moved closer and rested her shoulder against the wooden leg of the swing set. "Is it being here again, or being worried about going home?"

 

"Yeah," he admitted.

 

"You've been okay. William's safe and happy, and the world hasn't ended, and the two of us haven't killed each other yet."

 

He swayed back and forth. "You've been keeping tabs?"

 

"I have. Give me my panties back, by the way." Scully nodded toward the motel. "She thinks you lost them at the Laundromat, but that's her favorite pair, Victoria's Secret discontinued them, and you keeping them is Melvin-Frohike-creepy."

 

Mulder pushed his lower lip out into a pout. "I was gonna give them to Melvin Frohike," he teased. "Do you know John Fitzgerald Byers hooked up with Teresa Nemman-Hoese this afternoon? Who would have called that one?"

 

"Someone should have," she said thoughtfully. "Byers and Teresa are both an intelligent, well-mannered, well-meaning type of paranoid. They're crazy, but good neighbors and largely innocuous unless you have to sit next to them on a plane."

 

"At the diner tonight, they held hands and addressed each other by their screen names," he told her. "I bet, this time next year, they're married with a baby named 'Zapruder.'"

 

The metal links of the chain holding the swing creaked lazily as he swayed.

 

"Do I detect a hint of jealousy?" she asked. "It’s so simple for some people, doesn't it?"

 

"Aaron?" he suggested casually, without answering her question. "In case we need a baby name this time next year. What about Aaron? That's a Biblical name. A saint-"

 

"And Elvis Presley's middle name. Elvis Aaron Presley. The answer is still 'no.' Someday I'm telling our son his father wanted to name him 'William Elvis Scully.'"

 

"His father wanted to name him 'William Elvis Mulder,'" he reminded her. "What about Morrison?" Mulder hummed a few bars of The Doors' 'Light My Fire.' "Not all babies have to be named after dead people, Scully."

 

She smiled a secret, promising smile. "What about a girl?"

 

He pushed his eyebrows together. "I have to spend minutes masturbating into a cup so you can be pregnant for nine months and go through labor and-"

 

"Don't forget the risk of placental abruption and gestational hypertension. At forty-three years old. Urinary incontinence. Hemorrhoids. The episiotomy. Sleep deprivation. Caffeine deprivation."

 

He nodded. "Right. Anyway, I even go to the store for more diapers while SportCenter is on and right as my bagel bites are ready, but you won't let me name a daughter 'Elvis,' either?"

 

Her lips moved silently, “No,” and he smiled. He felt the easy ebb and flow between them - a common past, a common goal. Dana did know him, but His Scully knew him in a way Dana never could.

 

"Why am I seeing you this week? I'm not asleep and I'm not hallucinating, and no, I'm not feeling dizzy or confused. Is it the place?" He'd returned to Skyland Mountain and The Mystic Pizza Hut without seeing her, though. He hadn't even dreamed of her in years, as if his subconscious memories were blocked along with her conscious ones. He had to work up his courage before he asked, "Or has the chip in your neck stopped working?"

 

"I don't know," she answered.

 

"First thing Monday morning, I'm making an appointment with your oncologist. You're going if I have to cuff you and carry you over my shoulder."

 

If the chip had malfunctioned, he didn't know where he'd get another one. Krycek was dead. Cancerman had to be dead. The labs, the vaccines, and the hybrid experiments: all gone. Mulder won his battle against the future, but not the war. With the stakes even higher, his enemies' enemy would have been his friend.

 

He couldn't find another chip for her neck and, if she wanted another baby, he couldn't find more of her ova, either.

 

She sat on the neighboring swing and looked up at the sky. He smelled her: shampoo and fabric softener and fancy shower gel. He felt the heat radiating from her shoulder toward his.

 

She pointed at the sky. "There's Ursa Major. Draco. Cassiopeia. Can you see them?"

 

He tried, but so far he found the Big Dipper. Maybe.

 

She pointed near the moon and told him, "It's hard to pick out Ophiuchus, but he's there, rising."

 

"I know. I'm working on that, too." He stopped scanning the heavens and looked at her again, with her hair shimmering in the moonlight. "I miss you."

 

"I know. I miss you."

 

Mulder gestured to Dana's motel room and said, "Despite what she saw this week, she still thinks I'm thumb-chewing, foaming-at-the-mouth crazy."

 

"But you're good in bed, and you make pretty babies," Scully said easily. "It makes up for some of the crazy."

 

"Good to know."

 

He resumed watching the infinite sky. They were all creatures of stardust, she told him long ago. He told her the lights from the long-dead stars were wandering souls, forever traveling through time. They'd seen the beauty in the heavens and the monsters in the darkness together. He couldn't lose her - not to cancer, not to anything. He refused to save the world if she wasn't part of it.

 

Without speaking, he reached over and took her hand, needing the reassurance of her skin against his.

 

"I'll always have your back, partner," she said, as if reading his mind. "I'm right there with you."

 

He nodded.  

 

"It's getting cold,” she observed. “You should go inside."

 

"William's asleep," Mulder said. "Frohike's in my room, keeping an eye on him. I'm too wound up to sleep. I thought I might go for a run. Clear my head. Figure out what comes next."

 

"You run a lot. That's why your shoulder hurts."

 

"My shoulder hurts because you shot me," he reminded her. "I've been running since I was a teenager."

 

"You're forty-five years old. This is the universe's way of telling you it's time to stop," she suggested.

 

She gave him an enigmatic smile promising, well, everything. Despite the body count and water under the bridge, a light still shone at the end of the tunnel. Every journey had an end, and their world had a future. Her faith in him wasn’t misplaced, and he could love her as bravely as she loved him.

 

Mulder exhaled. "I hope you’re right."

 

****

 

Mulder stood on the stoop a minute, working up his nerve.

 

In Frohike's cell phone, Scully's phone number was in the sub-directory labeled ‘hotties.' Mulder dialed and leaned against the doorjamb. He heard the phone ringing against his ear as well as inside her room.

 

"Yes, Mr. Frohike?" her voice said cautiously.

 

The caution was warranted. On occasion, Melvin Frohike still got a few sheets to the wind and called Dana in the wee hours to profess his love. After she hung up on him, he'd call Mulder's phone to wax philosophical about brotherhood and friendship and "The Lord of the Rings" until he passed out.

 

"It's me," Mulder said, using his inside voice. "Frohike's busy trolling Internet dating sites for - and I quote - 'hot Seattle or Portland grunge band chicks.' Were you asleep?"

 

"No. Is Will okay?"

 

"He's been down for the count for hours. What are you doing?" he asked, though he knew.

 

"Working on my report. Packing things up." She paused. "Why? Has there been a development in the case?"

 

Mulder shifted against the wooden jamb. "Byers and the new love of his life are off stargazing, so there's the cute kid and the creepy old hacker guy in my room, Scully. Nobody at the station. No developments in the case. Nothing on TV. Nothing to read. Even Skinner's forsaken me for Morpheus."

 

"Poor Mulder."

 

"I might have left some love in your room on Tuesday or Wednesday night. Before I got killed trying to protect you. Can I come over and get it?"

 

He heard a momentary silence on the phone before she chuckled. "Do you think that line is going to work?"

 

"Worth a shot. You know, I was mostly dead yesterday."

 

"You're obviously feeling better."

 

"I'm not a medical doctor. You should feel me to be sure."

 

"Your lines aren't improving. In fact, they may constitute a crime, and I'm sworn to protect the public. Where are you?"

 

He heard her get up from the motel bed.

 

"Close by."

 

"Mulder, you're right outside my door, aren't you?"

 

"Open your door and see."

 

The deadbolt slid back. The door opened, and her face looked bemused. She was barefooted, wearing her jeans and his old Oxford T-shirt.

 

He closed the cell phone and grinned bashfully He still got butterflies in his stomach, after all these years. "Hi," he said, putting his Oxford education to good use.

 

"Are you finished saving the world for the night?"

 

"For tonight. Next shift starts at dawn. I'm saving the entire universe, Scully."

 

"Are you?" she asked lightly.

 

"I am. At the moment, though, I'm off the FBI clock."

 

He trailed his fingertip down her arm, feeling the spark jump from her warm skin to his. "About that love, Earth woman..."

 

Her eyes sparkled. She smiled promisingly and tipped her head to the right, inviting him in.

 

"Ooh-rah," he said reverently.

 

****

 

Each kiss was sipped heat, like good whiskey and as intoxicating. Her skin was made of equal parts velvet and satin, and she smelled of William's shampoo again. His shirt got tossed somewhere, and his Nikes were probably MIA. Neither of them turned off the lamp. Mulder wasn't sure the door to her motel room was dead-bolted. He cared about none of those things. As they lay in bed together, he cared her breath caught when he touched her, and her breasts pressed against his chest as he held her close.

 

"Do you know why it's called a Class M planet?" he whispered. He kissed a lazy trail that began at her earlobe, led down her neck, and went south through the valley between her breasts. "On Star Trek?"

 

"Why?" she whispered back.

 

"His wife's initial. Gene Roddenberry's wife," he said, punctuating each sentence with his lips. "Majel. He said Majel made life possible."

 

He felt her fingers moving through his hair and across his shoulders. Space-time fell out of joint. The event horizon pulled him into her.

 

She made life possible.

 

Once more, Mulder told himself. Once more as the clock counted down. He tried to turn off his mind, to get lost in her, but he couldn't.

 

"What's this?" Mulder whispered, passing his lips over the new tattoo on her abdomen.

 

"A monarch butterfly," she whispered back.

 

"I know what it is." He plotted a course back up her body so they were face to face as he asked, "Why is it?"

 

She looked at him, her hair tousled and her lips swollen. She started to speak, but stopped.

 

"Why did you get it?" he clarified, touching the orange and black ink with his hand. "Rebirth? Change?" he guessed. Dana Scully hadn't gotten a tattoo on a whim, because it looked pretty in a book. He could hypothesize the symbolism, but he'd rather she told him. Especially if it involved someone back home - like an investment banker with a picket fence who didn't tilt at windmills and wrestle nightmare monsters and try to save the universe on an FBI budget.

 

"Migration," she answered. "The monarch butterfly travels thousands of miles."

 

"A long journey."

 

"So long the monarch starting the journey isn't the same one finishing it. It's the second or third or even fourth generation. It appears the same, to the casual observer, but it's not."

 

He nodded. "None of us are the same people we started out as. You're not. But I'm not, either. I-"

 

She watched him, all blue eyes and fair skin.

 

"You are so beautiful," he told her. "I can't lose you. But I can't ever be the man you want," he confessed. "And I don't know what happens next, either."

 

She touched the old scars on his cheeks, and ran her fingers over the gunshot scar on his left shoulder and down to the palm of his hand, where the newest scar wasn't. His life with her was indelibly written on his body.

 

"I felt like I was cheating on you," he blurted out. "I was cheating on you with you, as crazy as that sounds. I'd lie awake at night, as you slept, thinking 'Scully would kick my ass if she caught me doing this.' Mr. ISU with the Volvo in a reserved parking space, stopping to get organic milk and environmentally-friendly diapers, and coming home to you... I didn't even recognize myself. I know you wanted the baby, but you needed me. You and I made love and we made a baby and you did need me. You needed me to go to the drugstore and watch him while you got a nap and make sure some super-soldier didn't bust through your apartment door after him. William was ours and you needed me. And I needed you to need me or else I didn't want to keep living."

 

He nearly jabbered, but she let him keep talking.

 

"You came back and you didn't remember and the Board wouldn't let you practice medicine until you took all those classes and we had a toddler and you still needed me. No, not me," he corrected. "You didn't need Fox Mulder, the self-absorbed G-man who believes in all things that go bump in the night. You needed a stable guy who looks like he could be your son's father. One with office hours and sound financial planning. Doesn't get himself shot or fired or abducted. You needed me to give you a place to stand, and I didn't want to let you down." He hadn't inhaled in some time, and he ran out of breath.

 

"Once I didn't need you anymore, you left," she answered softly.

 

He nodded. "I guess."

 

"Before I figured out the real you and left?"

 

He nodded again.

 

She reminded him, "It was always you."

 

"To a casual observer," he stipulated.

 

"As an FBI agent and a medical doctor, I qualify as an expert witness. It was always you," she repeated, and requested, "Come here, Mulder."

 

He gave up thinking and let the gravity of her pull him. She was ivory and amber, with nipples growing erect beneath his lips and fingertips and hips rocking up against his. He still loved the sounds she made, how her body smelled, and the way her skin warmed and shivered and rose in goose pimples. He still loved her - past, present, and future imperfect - and he'd love her on her terms, one last time. In case the world did end.

 

****

 

It took ten minutes for Scully to fall asleep and Mulder's post-coital neurosis to set in.

 

He curled up behind her, pulled the motel blanket higher over them, put his arms around her, and watched the darkness. He wanted to know if she was still thinking about another baby, and if he should clear out some space in his medicine cabinet. About the lump in her breast and what came next for them. Whether her tattoo marked the end of a long journey or the beginning of a new one.

 

The green numbers on the bedside clock nibbled away at the night.

 

Mulder ran his fingertips over the back of her neck, checking for the implant. He felt it. That didn't mean it still worked, though.

 

He couldn't find the lump in her breast to make sure it hadn't grown. He could only pass off so much searching as after-sex caressing before she ordered him back to his own room.

 

"It's the right breast, isn't it?" he asked softly.

 

"...can't believe they let you into Oxford," she mumbled.

 

"I know this is your right breast. The tumor, the cyst - it's in your right breast?"

 

"Um-hum."

 

He slid his fingers down the curve of her breast again. "Scully, I don't think it's there."

 

She responded with a disinterested "Mum."

 

"It's gone. It's not there," he repeated.

 

She must have grown tired of his home breast exam skills because she reached up, batted his hand out of the way, and felt for herself. "Okay," she muttered, and closed her eyes again. "Good."

 

"Is it supposed to heal so fast?"

 

She answered, "Maybe," moving her lips as little as possible.

 

Mulder pushed up on his elbow. "Scully, the ranger in the forest - did he touch you?"

 

He heard a displeased sigh. "I don't know. Probably. Yes."

 

"If Jeremiah Smith healed the lump, what about your memories? Do you remember correcting me about a class M planet years ago, or did you read it in your journal? Scully, are you remembering?"

 

"I'm remembering why I used to send you to sleep on the sofa after we had sex," she answered threateningly.

 

Mulder worried the inside of his lower lip as he studied her in the moonlight creeping around the drapes. "Is there still a scar on your abdomen? Stretch marks? When was the first day of your last menstrual cycle?" he demanded.

 

She moved - sitting up in bed and glaring at him. "Enough. A seven-thirty flight, Mulder. A two-hour drive to the airport, returning the rental car, and getting through airport security with all the wondrous treasures your son has tucked away in his pockets and book bag. This is your final warning. Silence, or go to your room."

 

He flopped down, stared at the ceiling, and chewed his lip.

 

She exhaled, adjusted her pillow, and lay down again, facing away from him. "You'd better be glad you're good in bed and you make pretty babies, Agent Mulder," she informed him icily.

 

He turned his head toward her and opened his mouth.

 

"No!" she snapped before he could say anything, so he went back to watching the shadows on the motel ceiling.

 

****


	7. Chapter 7

****

 

Day 7: The Doctor Dances

 

****

 

In a cruel cosmic convergence, a telephone started shrieking in his ear in syncopation with an insistent knock on the door. Mulder realized neither noise would relent. He got his eyes open and checked the clock. 5:16 AM.

 

Nude, he sat up in bed and looked around, getting his bearings. Scully's motel room. A case in Oregon. May. Jeremiah Smith and seven bodies in a circle and a new tattoo. A lump that wasn't cancer and wasn't there anymore. His old nemesis the bounty hunter, and a trip to the ICU. Class M planets and making love and the end of the world as they knew it.

 

He didn't see Scully's carry-on bag or William's backpack. She'd taken William's books and plastic light saber, but left Mulder's clothes draped over a chair. He looked closer. His holsters, wallet, badge, wristwatch, and cell phone huddled on the dresser.

 

He muttered one of those bad words William kept tabs on and fell back onto the pillow. A two-hour drive to catch a 7:30 AM flight; Mulder understood the math. But he'd have carried William to the car. Mulder would have helped her with the bags. Kissed them goodbye. Told them "safe travels" and "see you soon, Buddy."

 

Waking up alone the morning after - again – was unreasonable when it wasn't even morning. Again. He'd be angry and hurt but it was too damn early.

 

The knocking and ringing telephone continued, as did the nagging certainty somewhere gods laughed at him.

 

Mulder looked at the dark ceiling. He did this to himself. Every time. He went to bed with Scully and woke up with uncertainty, at the treacherous crossroads of Fairly Happily Ever After and Mortal Peril. He knew the terms when he signed on: as he stepped into her motel room last night, and as he invited her into his bed that March night years and years ago. Like throwing a curve ball or shooting out a tire, love looked easier if other people did it.

 

The sheets still smelled like her.

 

"Agent Mulder!" Skinner's voice called. The knocking picked up tempo, but the telephone caller gave up.

 

Mulder rubbed the sleep from his eyes, pulled his blue jeans on, and stumbled to the door.

 

Skinner hadn't shaved. He wore an old sweatshirt and an expression the polar opposite of happy. "The bodies are missing from the morgue," Skinner informed him tersely. "Two more are missing from funeral homes in Portland."

 

"They aren't in here," Mulder muttered, squinting at him. "You think Scully took them with her?"

 

"Get dressed, Agent Mulder."

 

The cool air prickled Mulder's chest hair and leeched away the pleasant warmth. Inside, the phone rang again, and outside an empty space marked where Scully had parked her rental car.

 

"Agent Reyes is calling to tell you she's located the third Arizona victim. Alive and well, as you predicted. Get dressed, Mulder," the Deputy Director repeated.

 

Agent Reyes phoned Scully's room to talk to Mulder, and Skinner knocked on her door, both at the butt-crack of dawn. Everyone else seemed more confident about the status of his relationship with Dana Scully than Fox Mulder did.

 

FBI Agents spilled out of the motel and into the parking lot. A few had dressed, but most wore robes or sweats and looked bleary-eyed. Martelli and Smithson had finagled a room. Or at least, a bed - possibly from an agent currently on duty or shacked up elsewhere.

 

Mulder rubbed his eyes again and asked Skinner, "Did you see Scully leave?"

 

Skinner nodded. "I carried William to the car for her, and your Gunmen friends got the bags. She wanted to let you sleep," he said, and turned away. "Let's go, Mulder."

 

The door opened to the motel room the taxpayers expected Mulder to be in. Byers wore a trench coat over his suit, and still had the love-struck look of a nerd who got a date with the prom queen. Frohike stepped out after him, dressed for battle: fingerless gloves, furry vest, battered laptop under his arm, and a giant 7-Eleven cup of soda.

 

Mulder, realizing 'discrete' wasn't his middle name at present, studied the horizon as he waited for Frohike's comment. Instead, Frohike pealed a Post-it note off his laptop and handed it to Mulder. It read, "Bye Daddy thank u 4 saving the world."

 

"I'm holding a kiss for you," Frohike offered, and put his free hand in his vest pocket.

 

"From William, I'm assuming?"

 

Frohike nodded as he took a noisy drink of soda. "It's sticky, and don't expect tongue."

 

A car engine started, and they flinched as headlights pierced the darkness. The moon had set. The scent of coffee - the perfume of morning - drifted from somewhere. Mulder looked at the black sky again for a few seconds, and forgoing the kiss, stretched before returning inside.

 

The man in the dresser mirror looked tired, and, as he had a week ago, too old for this bullshit. He needed a shower and shave and six-month sabbatical and one of those 'how's that working out for you' relationship talks with Dr. Phil.

 

Another car engine turned over, and the SAC yelled for Mulder to hurry up. This time, hopefully, the bodies wouldn't be just as dead in a few hours.

 

Mulder found another note beside his holster, this one on stationary with "Forensic Science Research & Training Center, Quantico, VA" printed at the bottom. In Scully's neat script was, "Be careful, Mulder. I've met my one miracle per week maximum."

 

She didn't sign it 'love Scully.' The note lacked X's and O's for hugs and kisses or even a smiley face. Dana Scully only drew anatomically correct hearts on paper, but it was something. Better than nothing, and better than skid marks and countless unreturned telephone calls the morning after. Aside from William, and the multiple times she'd saved Mulder's life, the note might be the first tangible evidence she cared about him. It might be the end of the world, but he wasn't dead and Mulder felt things had started looking up - romantically and apocalyptically.

 

Once he found his shoes, Mulder brushed his teeth and put both notes inside his briefing folder. His cell phone's screen had shattered; its electronic internal organs showed through. He dropped it into his pocket anyway. Mulder put on his holster and his scratched wristwatch and checked the clip in his pistol. He headed out to catch a demigod and save the world.

 

****

 

Aside from being unseemly, finding a female corpse attractive unsettled a fellow. Unfortunately, Mulder remembered that being the case. He'd noticed Karen West looked like Stephanie, even. In the crime scene photos, Ms. West had fair hair and a nice rack and the long, lean legs of an athlete. The file indicated she left her husband, a workaholic surgeon, a year earlier, and started seeing an executive at the hospital where she worked. DNA evidence indicated intimate contact with both men shortly before her death, and their statements indicated their affection for her. The new boyfriend wanted to marry her, and the ex-husband wised up and wanted her back. Beautiful Karen West never had time to figure out what she wanted before a hiker found her body in the forest outside Bellefleur.

 

Her friends and family buried her Friday in a lilac suit. Sunday morning she wandered onto Main Street buck naked in time for early Mass. CNN had video.

 

The agents assigned to monitor the Baptist cemetery claimed Mulder relieved them at six, but Mulder was at the morgue with Skinner at six AM.

 

Karen West, cold and frightened but unharmed, told the female deputy she went for a run Saturday afternoon a week ago and woke up beside an open grave. Her open grave. She didn't seem to comprehend she'd been dead and buried. She told the paramedics and deputies they'd made a mistake. She insisted it hadn't happened until her ex-husband rushed into the station and she saw his expression. Now she sat holding a cup of coffee and watching it numbly.

 

Mulder understood completely. Post-traumatic Death Disorder. They could get together with the Arizona victims and form a support group.

 

"She makes seven, by my count," Skinner told Mulder, as they watched Karen West from the other side of the deputies' little bunker-like station. 

 

She had blankets wrapped around her. Her ex-husband sat beside her, holding her hand. An anxious collection of deputies and FBI agents stood in a half-circle, more gawking than monitoring. Frohike, relegated to the computer corner, kept taking covert photographs of her, and John Byers kept telling him to stop. The paramedics focused on preventing the CNN cameraman from having a nervous breakdown.

 

"Two men walked out of the morgue during the night, one left the local funeral home," the Deputy Director continued. "Two are missing from funeral homes in Portland, and two bodies are missing from the cemeteries. That's seven."

 

Mulder nodded silently. Last night, he told the team to locate the shape-shifter and keep him safe, but not to interfere. Mulder didn't want to prevent Smith from returning the lives he'd taken. Locate and surveil Smith and call Mulder to negotiate. The plan seemed simple and effective - except, counting himself, Skinner, and the SWAT agents, Mulder had six G-men who believed in aliens, and he needed seven bodies surveilled around the clock. The exhausted and naive deputies and Portland agents had to fill in the gaps, which complicated matters. The media frenzy and frightened citizens outside didn't help, either. For once, Mulder missed Agent Doggett's presence.

 

Despite Mulder showing them the videotape of Smith shape-shifting, the Portland agents apparently didn't understand Smith could impersonate any one of them. Agent Martelli swore one of the SWAT team relieved him and Agent Smithson from guarding the cemetery at midnight. The SWAT agent protested he did no such thing. Another Portland agent said SAC Boyle told him they had Jeremiah Smith in custody, though obviously Boyle did not. The FBI made the Keystone Cops look competent.

 

Mulder overheard the word "zombies" several times, and pretty Agent Smithson added a large cross necklace to her otherwise drab FBI suit. Novices. All of the Oregon recently-dead were rattled but in perfect physical health. True vampires would have awakened blood-thirsty, and zombies would have shambled.

 

Smith wanted to resurrect the victims or he wouldn't be doing it in such a rush, with the FBI breathing down his neck. Jeremiah Smith waited weeks last year to reanimate some of the Arizona victims, according to Agent Reyes. This morning's urgency meant, to Mulder, Smith had something he wanted to do next. Surrender to the FBI, hopefully, since the FBI was having no success at apprehending him.

 

Mulder’s alternate hypothesis: the bounty hunter closed in on Smith, creating the choice between resurrecting the victims now or never. For the first time in thousands of years, ‘later,’ for Smith, might be measured in minutes, not eons.

 

"Why didn't he let us catch him after he brought back the seventh victim?" Skinner asked Mulder. The station buzzed with nervous energy, but Skinner spoke so only Mulder heard him. "You said he'd come to us."

 

"He will, but would you trust this crew, if you were Smith?" Mulder answered, equally quiet. "Shut the investigation down before these people hurt someone. You and I will bring him in."

 

Skinner said, "I'll have the team-"

 

"He won't come to your SWAT team."

 

"But he'll come to you?"

 

Mulder nodded.

 

"Let me guess: your plan is go out to the forest, act as bait, and hope for the best? With me as your wingman?"

 

Mulder nodded again.

 

"I don't like your plan." The Deputy Director put his hands on his hips. "My days as a field agent involved polyester leisure suits.  I have a dinner date tonight with my wife."

 

"Scully and I are having another baby," Mulder said. "Maybe."

 

"So no pressure," Skinner responded sarcastically.

 

"None," he agreed. "Either we bring in Jeremiah Smith and save the world - including your wife and William and Scully and our baby to-be-named-later, or we start working on our talking points for welcoming our new grey-skinned overlords."

 

"When you put it that way, your plan doesn't sound so bad," Skinner conceded.

 

The SAC came over to Mulder and Skinner with a cup of coffee in his hand, two days' stubble on his face, and dark shadows under his eyes. "We have Situation Normal, All Fucked Up," the SAC said unhappily. "My people are going in circles. I'll be lucky if they don't start shooting each other soon."

 

"You're right." Mulder slid off a deputy's desk and to his feet. "I think your people have done all the good they're going to do."

 

"They're fine," the SAC assured him, and glanced at Skinner. The Deputy Director put the Portland agents even more on edge - like they might be executed if they screwed up. "They're tired and tense. Anyone would be. Yesterday, our suspect, according to Dr. Scully, was a female serial killer. I saw Ms. West's corpse. I saw all the corpses. Now she's here talking to us." The SAC took a breath as if to steady his nerves. "Honestly, during the briefing last night... I believe what you're telling us, Agent Mulder. I saw it with my own eyes, but it's a lot to wrap my head around and it doesn't help the bad guys can be anyone."

 

"Welcome to my world," Mulder told him.

 

"Tell your people to go home," Skinner said abruptly, addressing SAC Boyle. "You're done here. Your investigation's over."

 

"Sir, my team is perfectly capable-"

 

"I'm sure you are," Skinner agreed. "But this case is an X-file. Your team can go home." The SAC opened his mouth again, and Skinner added, "That's an order, Agent."

 

The SAC stared at them. There were news crews and walking dead and at least one alien shape-shifter on the loose. "Sir-" he said.

 

"We'll take it from here," Mulder assured him. "I'm Butch, he's Sundance. Because that's worked out so well for us before."

 

"Shut up, Mulder," Skinner said, and picked up the keys to his rental car. "I'll drive." In afterthought, he told the SAC, "Good job, Agent. Get a report on my desk by tomorrow morning."

 

SAC Boyle gaped at them. "A report saying what? We have seven formerly-dead victims and we haven't caught whatever supernatural creature temporarily killed them?"

 

Skinner nodded tersely. "That's fine. Keep up the good work."

 

Mulder nodded in agreement and followed Skinner outside, into the media glare and the morning sun, and away from the official FBI investigation.

 

****

 

Skinner drove and Mulder manned the radio, the Uhura to the Deputy Director's Kirk. Except Uhura worked the comm. Between the outskirts of Bellefleur and the edge of the forest, all Mulder found on the radio was Hank Williams Jr. and cattle futures. If he returned to the mouth of Hell - again - he thought he deserved good music.

 

"Scully found a great radio station yesterday," Mulder said, and hit the scan button, trying another trip around the dial. "It's gone. I think she and I stumbled into a temporal abnormality of some sort."

 

Skinner continued driving on the narrow slice of asphalt highway through the forest. He had the expression of a man who spent an hour waiting in the wrong line at the DMV. The rental car's stereo speakers produced public radio, Billy Ray Cyrus, and the farm report.

 

"Could it have been XM radio, Agent Mulder?" Skinner asked tightly.

 

"Is that different from FM radio?"

 

"It's a service. A radio subscription service. This is your biggest concern?"

 

Mulder looked at him, puzzled. "How do you subscribe to radio?"

 

Skinner started to answer, but Mulder spotted the old orange X on the road ahead and interrupted him. "Never mind," Mulder told him. "I was right - a time warp. We probably picked up a station from 1993. Don't be surprised if you wake up with your clothes on inside out, feeling like the most popular date at the prison prom last night."

 

Skinner opened his mouth, closed it again, exhaled, and shook his head.

 

"Stop worrying," Mulder told him. He gave up on the radio and settled back in the passenger seat. "I'm under strict orders to take care of myself."

 

"Well, I'm under strict orders to take care of you, too."

 

"And you're doing a fine job, Walter," Mulder assured him.

 

Skinner's pocket rang. He took out his phone, checked the display, and showed it to Mulder. Dr. Dana Scully called. "Which of us do you think she wants?"

 

"Hopefully, me," Mulder said. "But you do have the whole powerful, married, tight-ass Marine thing going for you."

 

Skinner gave him the exasperated DMV look again and pressed the phone's speaker button.

 

Mulder leaned over and said, "Land of the Living Dead," before Skinner spoke. "Western Oregon chapter."

 

"Mulder, it's me," Scully's voice said. "Why are you answering the Deputy Director's phone?"

 

"I think the more relevant question is 'why are you calling the Deputy Director's phone?'"

 

"I was looking for you."

 

"Everyone's happy," he assured her, and took the phone from Skinner. Mulder turned off the speaker and put the phone to his ear. "Good morning, G-woman," he said, trying to sound casual. "How are you and the Wunderkind?"

 

"I'm fine. He's fine. We're at O'Hare," she said. "We have a few minutes before our next flight boards. Will's eating a cinnamon roll the size of his head, and I was cajoled into buying a $55 Pteranodon puppet at an airport gift shop. Terry the Pteranodon. It's as big as Will."

 

"His Jedi mind-control powers must have kicked in."

 

"I think it's more likely my willpower is depleted from lack of sleep. Where are you?"

 

"In the car with Skinner. We're headed to get breakfast," he lied.

 

"Mulder, I thought of something on the plane, but I had to wait until we landed to have Internet access to check the dates. If you're searching for something significant to your killer in Ophiuchus, there's a recurrent nova system of interest to you."

 

He'd hoped for a romantic revelation, or a 'good morning,' or even 'about last night,' but a recurrent nova system would do. "Okay."

 

"RS Ophiuchi," she said. "It's about 5,000 light years from Earth. RS Ophiuchi is composed of two stars orbiting each other, with the red giant going supernova every so often. At its brightest, it's a magnitude 5, so visible to the naked eye. In its dim phase, it's not visible without a telescope. Scientists recorded the supernova in 1919 and in 1950. Again in 1973 and 1992.”

 

"It's a random supernova?" Mulder asked.

 

"Baby, don't feed your breakfast to Terry," her voice said, hopefully addressing William. "Pterosaurs' diet consisted of Cretaceous fish and invertebrates. Besides, he's an overpriced inanimate stuffed object." She sighed and told Mulder, "Scientists assumed it to be random." She paused as if gathering her thoughts. "1973 to 2005 is 13 Earth years. 1973 is 19 years earlier, and 1950 is 31. Before that, 79 years. Monica e-mailed me the briefing notes. You're right; the killer fixates on mathematical patterns. Seven murdered bodies over 7 years, culminating in 2012, when the killer believes the world will end. RS Ophiuchi was last supernova in late 2005 - 7 years before 2012. That's 7, 13, 19, 23, 31, and 79-year increments. Those numbers are happy primes."

 

"Happy primes?"

 

"A series of a certain kind of prime numbers. I'm not saying it's a message of any sort-"

 

"It sounds like exactly what you're saying. Scully, some people believe supernovae and pulsars are beacons from intelligent life. Lighthouses. Messages. The signals travel through space in search of civilizations advanced enough to detect and decipher them. When the first pulsar was discovered in 1967, it was named LGM-1, the first signal from Little Green Men."

 

There was an announcement over the airport intercom, and she waited until it ended before she answered. "This is not a meeting of the tinfoil hat society. It's a coincidence, but it is there," her voice insisted. "Those increments between supernovae happen to be descending happy prime numbers." The cell signal faded for a second, returned and he heard, "...figured out and is reacting to the pattern, your suspect has access to a telescope - the backyard kind would do - and a background in advanced mathematics."

 

"So an ancient, probably extinct civilization is sending a beacon and Jeremiah Smith is answering? Or is it the colonists communicating with their henchmen here on Earth?"

 

"Mulder, are you even listening to me?" she demanded.

 

"I am listening. I also listen when you tell me the language of the universe is mathematics. God works in mysterious ways, but he likes constant numbers. It's a beacon," he repeated. "An intelligent pattern from alien life. Or where alien life used to be, 5000 years ago, and it's been counting down all this time. It's a 'Holy Shit' pattern from space, and you discovered it, and you call it a coincidence? You deserve a Nobel Prize. Scully, I swear, sometimes I think you wouldn't clap to save Tinker Bell."

 

Mulder and Skinner neared the turnoff from the highway, and the cellular signal started crackling.

 

"It's a potential pattern," her voice conceded after a moment. "But there's no way of ever knowing because no one recorded the supernova before 1919. I don't think they give the Nobel Prize for discovering something on Wikipedia on my laptop at the O'Hare International Airport Cinnabon. William Scully, do not feed that puppet another bite!" she added sharply.

 

"Does it matter I don't understand what a happy prime is?"

 

"No." He heard the tension in her voice. "It does matter the lowest happy prime is 7."

 

"Nothing comes after 7?"

 

"No. If - and it's a big 'if' - it's a mathematical message counting down, it's finished."

 

He waited a few seconds. “Nothing? Two's a prime number. Three's a prime number. Five?"

 

"They're not happy primes. Seven's the smallest happy prime number."

 

"One is the loneliest number."

 

"I don't think that's been mathematically proven, Mulder."

 

"I'm conducting an extended single-subject case study. You think I could get the Nobel?" he quipped. "Or does it make me a candidate for the Darwin Awards?"

 

She didn't answer.

 

"Thank you for the note," he said, trying a different tact.

 

There was a silence so long he thought their connection got dropped, leaving the static hum of the things unsaid between them. He heard William in the background, talking with his flying dinosaur puppet, but still no response from Scully.

 

The intercom at the airport came on again, the speaker's voice distorted by the phone and the sketchy connection.

 

"Our flight's boarding, and they've changed gates," she announced. She cursed under her breath. "I asked the gate agent before we sat down. We have to go. We're at the wrong end of the concourse. Will, baby, we have to go."

 

Mulder heard her laptop click shut and rustling as she gathered things up.

 

"We'll see you later," she said quickly. "Take care of yourself. And stay out of the forest. I know what you're thinking, Mulder, and don't do it. The pattern of numbers may be random, but it's a real serial killer, gunning for you. You and Will have Indian Guides Tuesday night. Do not put yourself in any danger."

 

"Okay," he agreed.

 

"Bye, Mulder. Tell Daddy goodbye," she urged.

 

"Bye, Mulder," William's distant voice called into her cell phone.

 

Mulder told William goodbye, and he'd see him soon, but he probably talked to air. He thought she'd hung up, but Scully's voice said, "Enjoy your breakfast."

 

"I will," he promised. "Dana- Scully, I uh, I lu-" He didn't say it.

 

"What?" she demanded, sounding harried.

 

"I love you."

 

He heard another pause seeming longer than it probably was. "I love you," her voice answered as the cell signal faded and was gone.

 

****

 

Milton composed poems about this kind of beautiful May morning, when he wasn't dwelling on the temptation and downfall of man. Drops of dew clung to the grass along the well-traveled path. Little wildflowers bloomed diminutively under the trees. The sun pulled the scent of damp vegetation from the ground. Somewhere in the old, dense forest, an ancient creature waited. Mulder knew it the way monarch butterflies knew to go north each spring.

 

The clearing ahead looked like a pastoral painting ringed with yellow crime scene tape. Twice. Evidence flags marked where bullet casings fell. The dark splotch of blood at the base of one tree belonged to Mulder.

 

Mulder felt his senses spreading out, as though he inhaled and absorbed the mysterious little bonds holding the molecules of life together. He shivered despite his jacket.

 

"Do you have a plan if a UFO appears over Bellefleur and starts beaming people up?" Skinner asked.

 

"My plan is Scully and William are far, far away," he answered with more bravado than he felt.

 

"Sometimes, Agent Mulder," Skinner said unhappily, "it's hard to tell the difference between your brilliant plans and your death wishes."

 

"My death wishes are filed under 'D.'"

 

"I'd like to file this clearing under 'Bad Memories,'" the Deputy Director commented, looking around.

 

Birds sang, branches rustled. "You and me both," Mulder said.

 

"What do we do?"

 

"We wait," Mulder suggested, and sat down on a fallen log. He checked his watch. "It's a stakeout."

 

Skinner found his own log to sit on, and rested his elbows on his knees. "What if he doesn't come?"

 

"He'll come."

 

"What if the bounty hunter comes after him?"

 

"At the end of the movie, as they're out of ammo and the entire Bolivian army is outside their house? You wanna be Butch or Sundance?"

 

"I'm Butch. You're most glib when you're scared shitless, Agent Mulder."

 

"We're at the end of the movie, Walter."

 

The Deputy Director reached up and unsnapped the strap securing his weapon in the holster under his left arm. "I have a dinner date with my wife," he said evenly. "One night a week, I'm home by seven and Sharon cooks. I haven't missed a Sunday night in ten years. I'm not starting tonight. I'm not starting May 2012."

 

"Then aim for the back of the bounty hunter's neck, and hope."

 

****

 

Scully provided a steady stream of scientific facts and healthy snacks on a stakeout. Skinner waited silently, like a soldier. He watched the underbrush and made Mulder wish he'd thought to eat a doughnut before they left HQ.

 

8:55 became 9:45. The sky darkened as a cloud covered the sun. The wind cooled. Mulder smelled a storm coming. He still felt an odd tug at his mind, part enticing and part soothing - part siren song and part woman's love.

 

"Mulder," Skinner said softly, and pointed to the left of the trail.

 

He heard rustling in the distant undergrowth. Both men stood.  Skinner put his hand on his pistol.

 

The noise came closer, and a red Irish setter appeared at the edge of the clearing. Its muzzle was gray. The dog panted and wagged happily, as if on a long, muddy, mindless romp through the forest. The breeze picked up, blowing stray leaves across the clearing. Thunder rolled in the distance.

 

"We’re alone," Mulder assured the old setter.

 

The dog wagged a few more times. It turned and disappeared into the thick forest. Mulder tried to relax and let his senses reach out, the way he had in his old dreams of Scully. What he wanted was out there, close; he felt it.

 

Or a UFO was about to appear to take Mulder on another mandatory trip to Hell and back again. He didn't look at his wristwatch because it didn't matter.

 

On the opposite edge of the clearing, Skinner stood so still he seemed like a statue. The tree limbs began to sway, but Skinner didn't move.

 

A moment later, he heard footsteps on the trail, a quick human gait. A woman's voice called to them. It was the young Native American deputy - Mulder still didn't know her name. As she came over the rise, she had one hand on her broad hat to keep it from blowing away.

 

"Sirs," she called again, though addressing Skinner. "They need you back at HQ, sir. Folks are scared, and they're worried about a riot. You didn't answer your cell, so the SAC sent me to find you. Can I give you a ride back to town, or do you want me to stay with Agent Mulder?"

 

Junior officers got drafted as messengers, so her mission seemed reasonable. Especially with the town in an uproar. Typically, Skinner would drive his rental car back to Bellefleur and let Mulder return with the deputy. Or call off their forest mission altogether. Instead, he said, "I have business here," and glanced at Mulder for a cue.

 

"Do the ancient ley line intersections have to vary?" Mulder asked.

 

The deputy looked at him uncertainly.

 

"The sacred sites," Mulder continued. "Last year, it was Oriabi Village, and now Bellefleur. You're communicating between worlds, circumventing the laws of space-time. Like a wormhole. Are you changing the location of your signal on Earth to avoid human detection, or some other reason?"

 

Her uncertain expression grew curious.

 

"There's another way," he promised. "We can get you access to radio telescopes. Satellites. Whatever you need. We can build a radio transmitter in the center of Stonehenge if need be."

 

"UNESCO's gonna love that," Skinner muttered.

 

"Thirteen, 19, 23, 31, 79," Mulder said to the young woman, reciting the happy prime numbers Scully told him. "The 5,000-year-old signal from RS Ophiochi was our warning, but we didn't figure it out in time. It's an emergency evacuation siren you activated as they destroyed your planet, isn't it? You and a few of your kinsmen survived, and the colonists enslaved you."

 

The deputy hesitated. The wind whipped her jacket around her, and the first cold raindrops fell like tears from the sky.

 

"I know you've tried to help us before - probably many times - and we've let you down," Mulder continued in his hostage negotiator voice. "Humans seem childlike to you, but you do love us. What we are is so rare in this universe, so precious. You've watched us advance as the centuries passed, but time is running out. I trusted you to return the lives you'd borrowed, and I need you to trust me. I’m not my father. You want to help us, and we need you to help us, one more time. Give humanity a place to stand, and if you'll help us, we'll help you."

 

The sky grew darker, and Mulder felt the pressure changing in the air around him. He told himself he sensed the storm, not a UFO. He focused his attention on Jeremiah Smith and trusted Skinner to watch his back.

 

"I alone shall pay the penalty of a great sin," the deputy said, though Mulder knew it wasn't the female deputy speaking. "That's the Gospel of Enoch. The Book of Watchers. Do you think that's true, Agent Mulder?"

 

"In Enoch, the Watchers are fallen angels who loved the women of Earth, even though God forbid it," Mulder said. "The Watchers secretly married the human women, had children with them. Those children were the Nephilim - the sons of angels with the daughters of men. Hybrids. Like all fathers, the Watchers taught their children things. These fathers knew forbidden things, though. They taught their sons the secrets of the heavens. Enchantments. Healing. How to give and take human life. God discovered the Watchers' transgressions, and he ordered the Nephilim killed. He cast the watchers out of Heaven and into a dark abyss - all but one. One fallen angel, God bound to the valleys of the Earth until the Day of Judgment. I think the Watcher is you. So yes, I think it's true."

 

She continued studying him.

 

"I think a woman can be the downfall of man, if he allows her to be," Mulder said, "but she can also be his redemption. If he allows her to be. I can't speak for you, but I don't regret one second."

 

The deputy was a plain woman with strong, even features. She wore her long black hair in a low ponytail, and her APB would read "of average height and weight." Even her manner was unassuming. Nothing about her would turn anyone's head, but she looked pretty as she smiled.

 

The smile didn't change, but the body around it did - into a small female with big blue eyes, hair the shade of auburn she was born with, and an ugly suit made for a woman about two sizes bigger than Scully.

 

The rain poured. It plastered Mulder's hair to his head and dripped into his eyes, making him blink. "Don't," he told Smith. "Don't reach into my memories and pretend to be her. Don't pretend to be that Scully. Please. Even if she could remember, we can't go back and start over. Those people are gone. I know you're trying to help, but... We're okay. We love each other as is, right now, no take-backs. We have to. Nothing rhymes with orange."

 

In the clearing, with the rain pelting them, she looked up at him, her brow wrinkled and her hands on her hips. "Stonehenge rhymes with orange," the bounty hunter as Scully c. 1993 informed him condescendingly. She spoke loudly to be heard over the storm. "It rhymes phonetically, while 'sporange' is a perfect visual rhyme. What the hell are you talking about, Mulder? Several things rhyme with orange."

 

Mulder thought he'd let it go, but as she spoke, lightning flashed and little men with plastic cocktail swords went after his heart with a vengeance.

 

"Mulder," Skinner's voice said urgently, and he unholstered his weapon.

 

Mulder looked at the far edge of the clearing. He saw another female figure standing in the rain. The four of them marked the corners of a square, with the first Dana Scully imposter at the east and the new Scully impersonator at the west, farthest into the forest.

 

"I'll go with you," the second Scully said. She looked older, with shorter hair and her suit cut more feminine. She seemed calm and still in the way Mulder expected something very old to be. "I'll help you."

 

Skinner held his pistol pointed toward the ground, and his gaze shifted from one female figure to another. Mulder knew what he was thinking. Was Smith the female deputy? Or was Smith the second creature who'd hung back, letting them lay their cards on the table before he committed?

 

Mulder closed his eyes and let his thoughts reach out. He'd done it on the ship, and in his old dreams, and on Skyland Mountain. He found the instinct buried in his DNA, from a time the Earth was new to Jeremiah Smith. It was the web of life, and the molecular place where souls met and mingled.

 

In his mind, Mulder saw a Native American woman, not so different looking from the female deputy. He couldn't tell her tribe, and he got more an impression than an image. An old, faded memory. He saw how her long hair shimmered and knew how her skin smelled as the sun warmed it. She smelled of wood smoke and leather hides, and the air around her was clean. She thought the creature watching her was a god in the form of a man, and he frightened her, but she'd fallen in love with him.

 

The feeling shifted, and Mulder's had Jeremiah Smith's perspective, long ago. He watched the young indigenous woman, thinking how lovely she was and how easy it would be to fall into a life with her. To forget his overlords and hunt and fish as human men did, and to sleep beside her at night. To have children and grow old with her and to, like the humans, slip from memory and into darkness. He would heal her if she became sick or injured, even though he was forbidden to help the humans. One day, their children, or their children's children, would find a way to fight back. Mulder felt Smith's temptation by normal things, and, regardless of the cost, he was powerless to resist.

 

Mulder felt the spark of passion, still palpable after centuries. He felt the sadness, too: his love for the woman brought her so much pain. Her family ostracized her, and she'd lost her child because he'd tried to be something he wasn't. Normal. Mulder felt the old ache of guilt, and it came from the creature to his right.

 

"Shoot him," Mulder ordered, and pointed at the second Scully.

 

As Skinner raised his weapon, she changed, instantly becoming the elegant Sharon Skinner. Walter Skinner might have blinked, but only a high-speed camera would have detected it. The Deputy Director fired, putting a large-caliber bullet in her shoulder. It wouldn't kill the bounty hunter, but it spun him, which gave Mulder a clear shot at the base of his neck. Mulder fired, emptying the clip before his finger stopped moving. In the end, it wasn't one of his shots hit the precise spot on the bounty hunter's neck; the bounty hunter no longer had a neck.

 

In a second, in the cold thunderstorm, the standoff ended. The bounty hunter's body lay dissolving in the mud, and Jeremiah Smith stood at the opposite edge of the clearing. Smith wore an Oxford shirt and slacks, and he looked oddly dignified despite being drenched. The smell of lightning and gunpowder hung in the air, and it was time to go home.

 

****

 

The storm moved on as they neared the road, but all three of them were soaked to the bone. Their shoes made sucking sounds on the trail, and an occasional leftover drop fell from a tree branch. The sun reappeared though, making the forest floor steam.

 

"Who are you signaling?" Mulder asked as they walked.

 

"We were seven, originally," Smith said. He spoke thoughtfully, as if he weighed each word before using it, and with the formal phrasing of a bygone era. "Seven friends. I am signaling my six kinsmen."

 

"To save you or to revolt against their overlords?"

 

"To say- To say I remain. The ships carrying them are coming, and I am here. On Earth. Among the humans. My friends’ response is my friends’ decision." Smith hesitated again. "I do not want to bring trouble upon them again, but I have lived among the humans for a long time. This planet is my home. I prefer to defend it."

 

"We like your plan," Skinner said from the front of the line.

 

"There were clones. Five of them. Are you the last?" Mulder asked. "Or are you the original?"

 

"I am," Smith answered to both questions.

 

As they approached the rental car at the trailhead, Mulder asked, "They found your victims nude. Why are they nude?"

 

"Humans are beautiful. I know garments display wealth and status. Clothing offers protection from the elements, but dressing humans unnecessarily is like putting a sweater on a dog."

 

"I'm gonna tell my son's mother. I don't know how any woman can need so many blue suits."

 

"Dana Scully. The doctor," Smith replied. "The mother of the prophesized child. She is your woman."

 

Smith said it as a statement of fact, but Skinner glanced back at Mulder curiously.

 

"Dana Scully's her own woman," Mulder answered.

 

Skinner hit the remote to unlock the Town Car, and Mulder opened the door to the back seat for Smith. He got in without comment.

 

After Mulder got in the passenger seat and buckled up, he looked back at Smith and asked, "What was her name? The human woman you loved?"

 

"I called her Epione," Smith answered, sounding as if he reached far back in time to remember. "I called her Epione for nearly one hundred of your Earth years, until she told me to let her body die.” He thought a moment. “For sentient beings, your lifecycle is so brief."

 

"Epione was the goddess of soothing pain," Mulder said. "Do you regret it? Loving her? Giving up everything for her? Being alone all this time?"

 

"No," he said.

 

"Do you think she ever regretted loving you?"

 

Smith thought ten seconds and answered with certainty. "No."

 

Skinner started the car, but even with the defroster going full-blast, the windows fogged. He locked the doors, turned the air conditioner on, had the wipers make a few sweeps, and waited for the glass to clear.

 

Skinner checked his cell phone, probably wanting to call his SWAT team and have them get the plane ready. They had Smith, and they needed to get him back to the Hoover Building and safety. The forest didn't have cell service, but Skinner pushed buttons and cursed at his phone.

 

Something across the road caught Mulder's eye - a flash of dark blue against the sea of various greens. Curious, he wiped the window with his wet sleeve, trying to clear it. Through the foggy glass, he saw Dana Scully watching him from twenty feet away. She stood back from the road, leaning against a tree as if waiting on him.

 

Skinner put his phone away and fiddled with the car's wipers and headlights. Jeremiah Smith sat quietly with his eyes closed.

 

Mulder wiped the window clear. He didn't just see her; he felt her soul pulling at his. Scully smiled and raised her hand, telling him goodbye.

 

Mulder could go to her. Touch her. Talk with her. He could risk delaying their return to DC and making Smith vulnerable to another bounty hunter. Or to a super-soldier. He could risk the future to spend another day with her.

 

"Drive," he told Skinner, but Mulder did wipe the glass again and raise his hand to her as the car pulled away.

 

****

 

The Deputy Director of the FBI did not fly coach. The Gulfstream jet seated seven men and an ancient alien with room to spare. Mulder could stand up from his seat without bumping his head - not something he could do in coach. With the cream-colored leather and polished wood and gleaming brass trim, the plane was like flying in a coffin, if coffins had ice makers, flat screen TV's, and espresso machines.

 

Byers elected to linger in Bellefleur with Teresa, but Frohike sat at the back of the jet's cabin, like a hobbit in the big seat. As they boarded the plane, he'd glanced around disdainfully, taking mental notes on the misuse of taxpayer dollars. Frohike had - to be thorough - tried reclining his seat and using the footrest. The personal HD TV screen. He discovered the icemaker, the Danishes, and free Wi-Fi. Now he blogged the flight on his laptop from 30,000 feet.

 

Even in the air, Skinner had a table with a stack of work on it. Mulder sat nearby, beside Jeremiah Smith. Over Wyoming, he exhaled, and by the Midwest, Mulder looked out the window and thought of all those people down there, going about their lives, unaware the clock counted down to Armageddon and humanity's salvation was the creature in the seat next to him.

 

"Do you see anything, Agent Mulder?" Smith asked.

 

"Clouds," Mulder answered, surprised at the idle question. So far, Jeremiah Smith didn't make small-talk. He spoke if spoken to but gave brief responses. He didn't even fidget. He picked up a pen and a legal pad a few minutes earlier, but the pad remained blank.

 

Mulder held his briefing folder in much the same manner.

 

"What do you need from me, Agent Mulder? To protect this world?"

 

Skinner stopped skimming his papers and looked at Smith. The SWAT agents sat in the back of the plane with Frohike, out of earshot, and the door to the cockpit behind Skinner was closed.

 

"What do we need first? A safe vaccine against the alien virus. We know one was developed. I've held it in my hand, used it on Scully, but..." Mulder said, "The formula's been destroyed." After another second, he added, "I'm probably the one who destroyed it."

 

"You are immune. She is immune. Your son is immune."

 

Mulder wanted to ask how Smith knew, but instead he said, "I want humanity to be immune."

 

"What would you do with a vaccine, if you had one?" Smith asked in his Sphinx-like way.

 

Skinner answered. "The World Health Organization will distribute it as part of routine vaccinations: tetanus, flu, MMR. We vaccinate everyone we can in the next five years."

 

"The government will vaccinate humans without their knowledge?"

 

Skinner's head nodded slowly. It must be all arranged. Mulder inhaled a disapproving breath, but he didn't have a better plan. After the UFO sightings and abductions over the years, belief in alien phenomena increased. The government couldn't convince people to get flu shots, though, let alone vaccinations against the Black Oil.

 

"Men have attempted your plan before. Men who began their projects with the noblest of goals, yet, in the end, furthered their own agenda. Men like the two of you," Smith observed.

 

Mulder had the sensation of not being alone with his thoughts, as if Jeremiah Smith was inside his head. From Skinner's expression, the Deputy Director had the same experience. Within a few seconds, the probing feeling stopped.

 

The intercom system switched on, and the pilot told Skinner they were over Pennsylvania.

 

"Epione is there," Smith said softly, speaking to Mulder. "If I am present, so is she. Her soul, as humans call it, comes to mine. Your woman, she comes to you, too. I see it in your mind."

 

Not sure how to respond, Mulder nodded.

 

"We are all travelers through time and space, with stars to guide us. The night is immense - greater than your mind can fathom - so choose your star wisely, Agent Mulder. And do not lose sight of it."

 

Mulder nodded again. This one-sided conversation was like psychotherapy with the Oracle of Delphi.

 

"What time is it, Agent Mulder?" Smith asked softly.

 

Mulder glanced at his scratched wristwatch. "2:55."

 

"All right," Smith responded, and picked up his pen.

 

After a few minutes without further questions, Mulder put the briefing folder down, adjusted the big seat back, and closed his eyes. He heard Jeremiah Smith writing on the legal tablet and the plane's jet engines droning. Skinner talked with one of the SWAT agents, making plans for Smith's protection. Frohike still pecked away on his laptop at the back of the plane, and the pilot said they'd be on the ground in an hour.

 

****

 

Mulder heard a cell phone ringing before the seatbelt sign chimed. Since Mulder had his seatbelt on and his cell phone was rubble, he kept his eyes closed. Over the years, he'd racked up enough frequent flyer miles for a free trip to Alpha Centauri and flown in every possible weather. Mulder could sleep through anything on a plane except, since William was born, a crying baby. Skinner might get to use the Director's plane, but profilers flew with the huddled masses.

 

The plane banked sharply left, and he assumed they circled to land. He didn't bother waking for that, either.

 

Mulder heard the unnerving sound of the engines sputtering to an uncertain stop.

 

He felt an unwelcome but familiar old pressure at the base of his brain. The paralyzing sense of fear. The certainty time wasn't moving at its normal speed.

 

Mulder opened his eyes to a silent, blinding flash of white light. What followed felt oddly disjointed. Men yelling. The jet's outer door backlit, missing, and backlit again. Nothing made sense, but there was nothing he could do about it.

 

As the spots faded from his field of vision, he saw Skinner, still at the table, looking dazed. The red emergency lights glowed in the cabin. Everything was shadow or scarlet except for the blue sky outside the windows. A SWAT agent crouched on his hands and knees in the aisle, as if he'd fallen. Another agent sprawled awkwardly back on the sofa.

 

The plane continued to drift along silently, losing altitude until it slipped into the cloudbank.

 

Mulder's brain ordered him to move, but his body didn't listen.  The left side of his face felt sunburned.

 

He heard Skinner's voice ask, "What happened?"

 

The plane wobbled. It stopped sinking and began to rise uncertainly, pushing Mulder's back against his seat. The blue sky returned as they emerged above the clouds.

 

"We're going to get some altitude, sir," the pilot's voice said over the intercom, sounding rattled. "In case we can't get the engines back."

 

"What happened?" Skinner repeated.

 

"I'm not sure, sir," the intercom responded. "There was nothing on the instruments. Lightning?"

 

Mulder saw Skinner and the two agents glance out at the puffy white clouds spreading for miles.

 

Jeremiah Smith wasn't in the seat beside Mulder.

 

"What's your assessment of the situation?" Skinner asked some unseen microphone.

 

The pilot answered, "It looks like we can make Dulles. I have manual controls. It will be bumpy, but we should make it."

 

"It's the last bump against the ground worrying me," Skinner said, and Mulder got his head to nod in agreement.

 

"I used to teach the boys to land the F-14's, sir," the pilot's disembodied voice answered. "I can set this bird down in your driveway, if I have to. Though I'd rather do it the easy way."

 

The engine on each wing clicked and gave a mechanical cough but didn't turn over.

 

"My wife expects me for dinner at seven," Skinner said.

 

The pilot's voice responded, "I'm giving my daughter away at her wedding next month."

 

Mulder thought, Scully and I are having another baby. Maybe. William and I have Indian Guides on Tuesday, he thought, but he couldn't coordinate his breath and mouth to say it aloud.

 

The jet engines made another set of useless clicking sounds. Someone's cell phone rang again.

 

"We need the cell phones off, gentlemen," another man's voice said over the intercom. The co-pilot, Mulder assumed. "Everyone find a seat and buckle up. Dulles is clearing a runway."

 

The ringing cell phone behind him was silenced. The agents got up and made their way to seats at the back of the plane. Mulder heard several more phones being turned off and seatbelt latches clicking.

 

Mulder started to get up to look for Smith but sat back down. The plane stopped gaining altitude and started to descend again. Without the engines to propel it, the jet randomly tipped left, right, and left again, like a paper airplane. A glass of water slid off the table and spilled. A “Men's Health” magazine skidded back and forth across the carpet on its slick cover.

 

"Frohike," he called, staying in his seat. "Is Smith back there with you?"

 

"No," Frohike's voice responded shakily.

 

"Any chance he's in the john?"

 

"No sir, Agent Mulder," one of the agents answered.

 

Skinner's cell phone rang. The Deputy Director startled and silenced it. Mulder saw him looking at Smith's empty seat. Mulder followed his gaze. He saw Smith's unbuckled lap belt. Whatever took Jeremiah Smith, Smith knew it was coming.

 

They sat with Skinner facing the agents at the rear of the jet and Mulder facing the cockpit, fastened safely into their big leather seats in a dark, plush metal coffin as it fell slowly out of the sky.

 

Mulder remembered to return his seat to its full, upright position.

 

He heard the pilot try to start each of the engines again, to no avail.

 

Smith's yellow legal pad lay on the seat, blank, with the pen clipped to the top few pages. There was no formula for a vaccine written on it. No coordinates for the closest stargate. No good-bye. Nothing. Game over. Humanity loses.

 

Mulder checked his watch. 3:51. Four minutes before they were supposed to land and five years before the end of the world.

 

At standard cruising altitude, if a plane lost all engines, it had about 20 minutes of forward momentum. Scully, far more susceptible to turbulence anxiety, told Mulder years ago. Also, the landing gear could be operated manually. Or hydraulically; he didn't remember, but he knew she told him the wheels came down in an emergency.

 

Twenty minutes was a long time to wait to hit the ground, and Mulder didn't hear those wheels coming down. He did see the ground getting closer. The silent, wobbling jet would have been peaceful if the Virginia terrain would stop getting progressively more detailed.

 

"Mulder," Frohike's voice called from the back of the plane.

 

Mulder's seat didn't pivot. He leaned sideways and looked back, but he still couldn't see Frohike. "What?"

 

"Agent Scully called my cell," Frohike answered, sounding as if he wasn't sure whether to tell or not.

 

Mulder didn't know what to say so, "Okay," had to do.

 

His watch said 3:56. As the plane tilted right, he made out the cars moving on the highway below them.

 

"Agent Mulder," Skinner said. Mulder jumped and looked away from the window. Skinner loosened his white-knuckle grip on one armrest long enough to tap the phone in his pocket and say quietly, "She called me, too."

 

He saw a path of little blisters on the left side of Skinner's face. Mulder suspected his own cheek had the same radiation burns. It felt like it.

 

He looked at the blank legal pad on the seat beside him, wondering if he should write a note to Scully. Or to William. People did that, as they were about to die. Instead, Mulder picked up the briefing folder, moved the two Post-it notes to the cover so he could see them, and held it.

 

Dying twice in one week: a record, even for Mulder.

 

He heard one of the engines click and cough again but start to whine. The pitch got progressively higher and louder until it reached a sound Mulder associated with not dying in a fireball of crumpled metal. The second engine followed suit. Skinner exhaled and loosened his death grip on the armrests.

 

The cabin lights returned, making Mulder squint after so long in the dim emergency lights.

 

"We're sweet, gentlemen," the pilot's voice said on the intercom. "Whatever happened, I'm setting this bird down gently and we're all going home tonight."

 

"For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble," Skinner commented, his voice still unsteady.

 

Mulder saw the airport in the distance, and he heard the landing gear descend from the Gulfstream's sleek metal belly.

 

"We're still in trouble, Butch. We just have five more years to worry about it," Mulder answered.

 

****

 

As soon as they were on the ground, Frohike showed Mulder the message on his cell phone which arrived nine minutes before the call from Scully. It was a text from Richard Langly, who must have been monitoring their flight from the Gunmen's bunker.

 

The screen read, "UFO about 2 intercept."

 

The Lone Gunmen had their next cover story, and they were all over it. In the hanger, Frohike jabbered on his phone, and the pilot and co-pilot inspected the exterior of the jet with Skinner. A paramedic wanted to look at Mulder's face, and Agent Doggett was on his way to investigate. Someone was bringing a radiation detector, and Mulder didn't give a shit. He wanted to go home. He didn't want to talk about Smith, or the UFO, or the case. He wanted his insides to stop quaking and to go home.

 

In long-term parking, ten days of yellow pollen had collected on the windshield of his vehicle. His empty coffee cup sat in the cup holder and a plastic Yoda toy lay beside William's booster seat in the back. Mulder's wristwatch said 4:51, but the Grand Cherokee's console read 5:00.

 

****

 

Mulder had owned Elvis' "Suspicious Minds" as a forty-five single, an LP record, an eight-track tape, a cassette tape, a CD, and an MP3, and greatly resented having to buy it again in whatever format came next. The FBI had bought him a two-pound Motorola DynaTAC, a bag phone, a car phone, a flip phone, and a series of smart phones - and he'd been able to work every one of them.

 

The Gunmen procured the iPhone for him, and its demise was a relief. Mulder couldn't operate the fancy phone any more than he could program his DVR or get Windows Vista to do what he wanted it to.

 

At the first AT&T store east of Dulles International Airport, the teenager behind the counter looked at the smashed iPhone and asked, "Is this a prototype?"

 

Mulder answered tiredly, "It's a paperweight."

 

"I can put you on the waiting list."

 

"Sell me something with buttons," Mulder requested, and laid his Bureau credit card on the counter beside the dead iPhone. "Something rhyming with 'crackberry.'"

 

The clerk complied. Given the storm of malcontent raging inside him, Mulder wasn't above whipping out his badge and gun, and requisitioning a new phone, if necessary.

 

Fifteen minutes later, Mulder sat in his Jeep with a working cell phone and all the gadgets to go with it. In the nearly-empty parking lot at the strip mall, he made his first call on the new Blackberry to the person first on his speed dial since Clinton's inauguration. Clinton's first inauguration.

 

"Where are you?" Scully's voice asked. "Oregon?"

 

Hearing her voice made everything better. It grounded him and helped him tell up from down when the sky started to fall.

 

"I'm back in town, outside AT&T's version of a methadone clinic," he answered. "I'm okay. Our plane had some mechanical problems, but we landed okay," he assured her. "Skinner and Frohike said you'd called them. Did you need me?"

 

"I had an odd feeling earlier, so I called, but... I bet everyone had their phones off during the flight. Do you have Smith in custody?"

 

"Not exactly."

 

"You didn't find him?"

 

"We found him; we don't have Smith in custody," Mulder said.

 

"You couldn't hold him?"

 

"In a manner of speaking," he hedged.

 

"Mulder, you aren't making any sense."

 

"We don't have Jeremiah Smith, and we don't have any murder victims. They all came back to life this morning. The ones in Arizona came home months ago; their families hushed it up."

 

"I saw the news, but I thought the reporters were playing free and loose with the facts. They're running a clip on CNN of you saying the victims aren't-"

 

"Aren't zombies because they don't shamble and aren't vampires because they don't sparkle. It was supposed to be sarcasm," he said wearily. "You'd think I'd learn my lesson about camera crews."

 

"At least you didn't mention werewolves this time," her voice said.

 

Holding the phone against his cheek made the little blisters hurt, so he switched the Blackberry to his other ear. "So we'll call this progress. Can I come over? Pick up William?" he added.

 

"He's eating supper, and Mom's coming to watch him while I go to the grocery store. I'll bring him over later."

 

"I can come get him." Mulder wanted to see them, to assure himself they were okay. He and Scully were okay, whatever 'okay' meant. If he could have finagled an invitation to spend the night on her sofa, he would have, but he didn't have the energy left to come up with a plausible reason. "Now works better for me."

 

The sun sank, casting long shadows across the asphalt. He felt like he sank along with it, like he was still on a plane slowly careening toward the ground.

 

"Or have you seen enough of me for one week?" he asked. "Do you want me to pick him up after school on Monday?"

 

"Mulder, are you okay?"

 

He exhaled and slouched down miserably in the seat. "There are blisters on my face. Like a bad sunburn. A few. The paramedic wanted a doctor to see them, so I thought I'd stop by your apartment."

 

"You don't get sunburned. How did you get blisters on your face? What paramedic? When did a paramedic examine you?"

 

"A couple minutes ago. Maybe an hour. We got Jeremiah Smith. Skinner and I. I lied, I know, but we took out the bounty hunter and we got Smith on the plane. We got him almost back to DC," Mulder told her rapidly, as his insides started to shake again. "Something intercepted our plane and Smith wasn't on it anymore and I have radiation burns on my face and I lost nine minutes and I don't have him, Scully. I don't have Smith and I don't have a vaccine and seven is the last happy prime number," he babbled, his chest so tight it hurt to breathe. "May 2012. They're coming back."

 

"Where are you?" her voice asked.

 

"Hell if I know. Somewhere. Some strip mall. Proverbially, I'm up Shit Creek, along with the rest of humanity. What if we do use your or my or William's antibodies to create a vaccine? What then?" he demanded. "Do we test it on innocent people, like the Syndicate did? What if the vaccine doesn't work and we end up creating monsters? Do we destroy those people and try again? How many people do we destroy while we're trying to save the world? Do Skinner and I say 'this is for the greater good' and end up becoming the men we fought to bring down?"

 

"Mulder, breathe," she commanded. "It's okay."

 

"It's not." He verged on crying, as much as he hated it. "No, it's not. I had Smith and I lost him and I feel like the entire universe is against me. No, it's not okay."

 

"It is," she promised softly. "I have faith in you."

 

He exhaled. "You should know better."

 

"You've never let me down. I may doubt some of the things you believe in, but I never doubt you, Mulder. It will be okay," she assured him. "It will." Speaking to someone nearby, she said, "Come here, baby. Leave your edamame salad and come talk to Daddy. He’s home."

 

Mulder heard thumping and rustling. William's voice asked, "Mulder, did your airplane fly over Nebraska?"

 

"Probably," Mulder answered shakily. "I think so."

 

"Pteranodons lived in Nebraska during the Cretaceous period. Did you see any Pteranodons?"

 

Mulder took a less-painful breath and said, "I don't think so, but I wasn't watching for them, either. Did you and Mommy see Pteranodons from your airplane?"

 

William spoke quietly, taking Mulder into his confidence. "I did. I saw a humongous flock of Pteranodons."

 

"We saw a flock of geese," Scully's voice said, a few feet from the telephone. "Pteranodons do not- Did not 'flock.'"

 

"Mommy, you don't know. You don't have proof. You weren't even alive during the Cretaceous period," William argued, and returned his attention to the phone. "I took a picture of them with Scully's phone. I have proof. It's a flock of Pteranodons."

 

"William, it's your reflection in the plane's window and a flock of geese," he heard Scully tell their son. The weight on Mulder's chest started to lift, and the sun looked higher in the sky than it had five minutes earlier.

 

William argued, "Terry saw them, too."

 

"Terry is a puppet," Scully called back.

 

"A Pteranodon puppet," their son answered disdainfully. Talking to Mulder again, William said, "Mr. Skinner and Uncle Doggett and Uncle Frohike will investigate. I e-mailed the picture to them. Uncle Doggett texted he may need to open an X-file."  


"You what? He what?" Scully's voice said. "Give me the phone. Give me my cell phone and go eat." He heard more rustling as she picked up the phone. "It's like a miniature you with magical thinking and superhuman texting capabilities every time I put my phone down."

 

"Uncle Doggett?" Mulder asked. "He's 'Uncle Doggett' now?"

 

He heard her chuckle. "Are you feeling any better?"

 

"I'm okay," he assured her. "I'm better. Thanks."

 

"Are you okay to drive? Can you drive here and let me look at your face?"

 

"Later. Let William eat his edamame salad, whatever the hell that is, and you go to the grocery store. I'm heading home, and I guess I'm reformulating my plan for saving the world. Again. Bring the chub scout and come over later. We can talk, if you want."

 

"Okay. We'll see you later." She took a few seconds to work up to adding, "I love you."

 

"I know," he answered, Han Solo-style, and she snickered as she hung up on him.

 

Instead of putting the Jeep in gear and heading home, Mulder sat in the driver's seat and leaned his head back against the headrest, thinking. Watching the sky and taking stock.

 

Seven years ago, he stepped into a beam of light in a clearing east of Bellefleur and vanished. He came back a different man, to a different world, and spent seven more years trying to find his way home.

 

Eight years ago, his and Scully's personal genetics got introduced in an impersonal test tube, but she hadn't gotten Her Baby. He'd been relieved and told her so. She danced with Mulder at The Mystic Pizza Hit - saying she did it out of pity - and on New Year's Eve, either he kissed her or she kissed him - the jury remained out - and the world didn’t end.

 

Nine years ago, they got waylaid by a lone bee, but she hadn't left the FBI. Or the X-files. Or him.

 

Ten years ago, Scully had terminal cancer at thirty-three years old. She got a tattoo and was willing to kiss Eddie Van Blundht and sleep with a sociopath but refused to dance with Mulder.

 

Twelve years ago, he lost his father and she lost her sister and suddenly he had a partner willing to work nights and weekends in their basement office.

 

Fifteen years ago, after he spent enough time buried in the X-files Diana left him, Mulder got assigned a new female partner with no field experience and unyielding skepticism and possibly the prettiest smile he'd ever seen. If he knew all the water that would pass under the bridge in the next decade and a half - how far they'd end up from the rash profiler with an interest in the paranormal and the young scientist ordered to keep him in line - he'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

 

The Blackberry chimed, indicating a new message. Mulder checked and found a blurry photo - his son's reflection with a few dark, distant shapes outside the plane's window - from Scully's e-mail. It could be William sneaking and using Scully's phone to prove he'd seen flying dinosaurs, or Scully sending it to prove it was geese. In Scully's apartment in Georgetown, Mulder knew the Pteranodons/geese debate continued.

 

Mulder wouldn't change a thing, and he suspected, neither would she. Except the Flukeman. For a woman who'd autopsy an elephant and pretend to eat a cricket, Dana Scully was surprisingly squeamish about giant parasites.

 

The sun held steady above the buildings, but the moon and the first star came out. Scully would tell him the star was Venus and not a star at all. And if the moon rose in the east, the North Star shouldn't be right beside it.

 

She was the star he steered by, and she always kept him honest.

 

At the end of the strip mall, three doors down from the AT&T store, he spotted tattoo parlor with a diminutive 'OPEN' sign hanging on the door. It looked like the type of place where teenagers got their tongues pierced. But clean. Like there was a low probability of getting in a knife fight or contracting hepatitis. The neon sign in the window originally read 'Gen-X Body Art' but only the X was lit, glowing bright orange at him in the dusk.

 

Mulder turned off the engine and got out of the Jeep.

 

****

 

One car parked in the two-car garage. One sink in the master bathroom got used, and half the walk-in closet. When William was two, Dana planted bulbs in the front yard that continued to bloom masses of little purple flowers every spring in her absence.

 

The bananas on the counter had turned sepia brown, while the soft spots on the oranges were a raw umber. Mulder's refrigerator held strawberries covered with blue, blueberries shriveled to black, and milk sounding like pancake batter as he sloshed it. One shelf contained an old twelve-pack of Samuel Adams seasonal beer that sounded interesting at the store. Months ago, Mulder satisfied his interest after two bottles. A recent note taped to the shelf in his refrigerator explained the three additional missing bottles. "If you don't die, get some better beer, dude," was scrawled in Langly's writing, with "Yeah," added by Frohike.

 

His freezer contained ice, ice packs, and two bags of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets William liked to eat in the order they became extinct. He hoped Scully thought to pack William's lunch; if Mulder sent a hastily-bought Lunchable, Miss Janet sent notes.

 

He fed the fish. He put the clean dishes from the dishwasher in the cabinets, most of a week's worth of mail in the trash, and the laundry in the washer. Mulder stripped and tossed those clothes in, too. He went to the bathroom and stood under the shower a while. Afterward, he dressed in a polo shirt and jeans, shaved, put the ice pack on his shoulder, got an ice pack for his cheek, and opened a crappy beer. Empty, the house was as pathetic as Mulder's old apartment, with hellacious property taxes and a big yard.

 

He checked his e-mail again, and his answering machine. He didn't answer the messages from Diane because he'd see her at Quantico in the morning, and he didn't answer the ones from Stephanie because he didn't want to. He did consider trying to convince William to change schools, though.

 

Outside, the sunset splashed orange and plum below the evening stars. Mulder roamed to the back deck to watch the sky darken and listen to The Rolling Stones play at Madison Square Garden in 1969. The AD who owned the house before Mulder was a cook-out king who built a deck worthy of his BBQ grill. The Gunmen added the outdoor speaker system last summer. Mulder didn't know the technical ins and outs of it, but he could push a key on the computer in his home office and play The Clash in the back yard loud enough to annoy a cardiologist who lived four houses down.

 

His shoulder felt scorched and sore. The side of his face felt like it was on fire. Mulder drank his beer and played with his new phone. Once he mastered the phone, he started on a second beer and another set of ice packs. He decided his kitchen wouldn't spontaneously produce dinner. He called Pizza Hut and learned it would be an hour wait for delivery.

 

He wasn't paranoid; the entire universe was out to get him.

 

Earlier, he carried the Bellefleur briefing folder outside and tossed it on the little wood table between the deck chairs. Mulder picked it up, looking at the notes from William and Scully. He felt like he let them down, but he didn't know what he could have done differently. He thought of Scully accusing him of waving his badge at the sky, and sometimes he felt like he did.

 

The briefing folder held reports, maps, photos - most black and white - so the yellow pages caught his eye. At first he dismissed them as his profiling notes, but Mulder noticed the handwriting. The script didn't belong to him. Or to anyone who'd learned cursive writing since the 1800's.

 

Elaborate diagrams and copperplate script covered the pages, describing a series of complicated lab experiments. He skimmed a honeycomb of formulas and mathematical equations beyond his comprehension. It reminded him of the warning insert with medication, the tissue-thin pages and pages of medical gobbledygook no one read except Scully.

 

Mulder stared at the pages, afraid to let himself believe.

 

Nowhere did it say 'this is the vaccine against the Black Oil,' but it had to be. Jeremiah Smith wrote it during the flight and hid it inside Mulder's folder for safekeeping. It had to be the formula, and it had to be usable; Smith wouldn't give humanity an imperfect vaccine anymore than Mulder would let William play with his SIG Sauer.

 

He held the yellow sheets as if someone might show up and snatch them back.

 

At the bottom of the last page, in the elaborate script of an earlier generation, was written, "I alone shall pay the penalty of a great sin, Agent Mulder. Please do what your father could not."

 

Instead of feeling excited or victorious, Mulder felt calm, and like more air fit in his lungs. He felt sad, too - for Smith, for everyone lost along the way, and for old childhood hurts long since scabbed over.

 

After he reread the pages a few times - and understood nothing except those final lines and a diagram of either a carbon compound or instructions for putting together a swing set - Mulder carried the pages inside, to the fax machine in his office.

 

The clock said 6:59. Skinner answered his cell phone tersely. "What, Agent Mulder?"

 

"What's she making? Your wife? For dinner?"

 

"Spaghetti Bolognese," the Deputy Director said tightly.

 

"All I have are dinosaur nuggets."

 

"What do you want, Mulder?"

 

"I want you to enjoy spaghetti with your lovely wife, and check your fax machine, and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow morning, we're saving the world, Walter."

 

As Mulder spoke, he punched in the number for Skinner's home fax and hit the green button. He started to send a copy to Scully but stopped. Instead, he faxed a copy to the Gunmen for safekeeping, and a copy to his office at Quantico. While the machine devoured the yellow sheets a final time, Mulder took two Tylenol, checked the pizza guy still hadn't arrived, and took his crappy beer and went back to the deck to watch the sky.

 

****

 

From the back yard, Mulder couldn't hear Dana's Prius pull in the driveway, but she had a remote control for the garage door, and he heard it open. Mulder found himself walking quickly through the house but hesitating as he neared the garage. It was embarrassing how the woman still sent him time-traveling back to anxious, love-struck adolescence.

 

In the garage, Scully contemplated how to extract their son from the center of her tiny backseat. Fifteen minutes before his bedtime, William slept so soundly his head lolled.

 

The reunion was anticlimactic, but familiar.

 

"He is out, Captain," she said, and glanced over her shoulder at Mulder. She'd dressed casually - jeans and a little green shirt - with her hair twisted up and caught with a clip. William wore pajamas, meaning he'd had a bath and brushed his teeth.

 

"I'll get him," he volunteered. "I have rope and a winch."

 

Instead, she gestured for Mulder to show her his face under the garage light. She smelled like fabric softener, baby shampoo, and rain.

 

"That's a radiation burn. Fluids, ibuprofen. Dry, cool compresses, and watch for any signs of infection."

 

"Thank you, Dr. Scully," he answered, and kissed her cheek.

 

"You look tired."

 

"Everyone keeps saying that, but no one lets me sleep. 'We've found a body, Agent Mulder.' 'We're missing a body, Agent Mulder.' 'We're being intercepted by a UFO, Agent Mulder.' 'Oh God, yes, harder, yes, don't stop, oh yes, Agent Mulder,'" he teased her. "There's a conspiracy."

 

Her hand lingered on his chest and, despite his bravado, her eyes looked sad.

 

While Mulder unbuckled and gathered up William, Scully's trunk disgorged William's backpack, a mesh bag of T-ball gear, and the duffle bag of little boy odds and ends they swapped back and forth. Once he'd wrestled William out of the booster seat and the car, she handed Mulder a three-foot tall flying dinosaur puppet. Terry the $55 Pteranodon, he assumed. Mulder returned from maneuvering William and Terry upstairs. She gave him a Tauntaun sleeping bag, the duffle and the mesh bag, and a plastic light saber to carry inside, too.

 

"How can one little boy require this much crap?" he asked. "If we have another one, you'll have to buy a real car instead of an aluminum can on wheels."

 

She gave him a warning eyebrow and added the book for Indian Guides, a pirate hat, and a tiny jacket to Mulder's Sherpa pile between her Prius and his Grand Cherokee. "How can you not feel guilty about a huge gas guzzler?" she countered.

 

"Oh, I do. I'm afraid they're gonna put on my tombstone 'Here lies Fox Mulder. He saved the world, but he produced a lot of carbon emissions.'"

 

"You're a riot, G-man."

 

"I'm a riot who has a pizza coming, and cold liquid in the fridge alleged to be beer. You're welcome to stay and enjoy both."

 

She didn't agree, but, as he made repeated trips up and down the steps, he didn't hear her leaving, either. He heard her put William's lunch for tomorrow in the refrigerator. She must have opened the produce bin because she called to him, "Are these berries some science experiment?"

 

"Life in the void," he called back, from the garage. "Count them; they're happy primes."

 

"I'll alert SETI," she said, but he heard the garbage disposal running.

 

Upstairs, the sleeping bag went in the hall closet, and the backpack got looped over a chair in William's bedroom. As Mulder put the light saber and pirate hat on the dresser, he heard William say sleepily, "Daddy?"

 

"Hi, buddy. I carried you upstairs from the car. Mommy's downstairs. Do you need to go to the bathroom?"

 

Through the window, Mulder saw a teeny-tiny car creak around the corner and squeak to a stop in front of his house. No wonder delivery took forever. The car was half faded orange and half Bondo, and the Pizza Hut sign on top of the ancient subcompact threatened the vehicle's structural integrity. A headlight was out, and black smoke billowed from the tailpipe. Mulder had cash in his wallet downstairs, but the driver's tip from Scully would be “buy a hybrid.”

 

"Are you and Scully saving the world?" William asked.

 

Mulder sat on the edge of the lower bunk bed, smoothed William's chestnut hair, and kissed his forehead. "We are."

 

"Tonight?"

 

"Not the entire world tonight. Tomorrow."

 

Downstairs, his front door opened. He heard Scully conversing with the pizza delivery person.

 

A New York Mets and a Red Sox pennant decorated William's closet door, along with Mulder's number from the Boston Marathon. A Lego model of the Death Star sat on the bookshelf, and a poster of Luke Skywalker watched over the bunk beds. A pirate toy chest held necessities, and a plastic cutlass was nearby, in case of marauders or Redcoats. An 'I want to believe' poster hung beside the little desk, as one still hung in Mulder's office at Quantico.

 

"I saw a real flock of Pteranodons," William said, fading fast.

 

"I saw your picture."

 

"Mommy's a big, skeptical, stick-in-the-mud."

 

"Mommy makes you work for it."

 

William nodded, rolled to his side, and put an arm around the puppet. "Kiss," the boy insisted, as Mulder started to get up.

 

Mulder kissed William again, and, since he knew he wouldn't slip by without doing it, kissed the dinosaur puppet. Terry was a step up. For a while, everyone had to kiss the plastic Yoda goodnight.

 

Scully locked the front door as Mulder returned downstairs. A Pizza Hut box balanced on the back of the sofa. In the aquarium, his fish congregated at one end as if intrigued.

 

"Excellent," he told her, and his salivary glands agreed. "Did you get money out of my wallet or do I owe you?"

 

"She didn't ask for money, so I assumed you gave a credit card over the phone. She said this is your 'usual.' How much pizza do you order that you have a 'usual'?"

 

Puzzled, he answered, "No, I didn't give them a credit card." He opened the box, and delicious-smelling steam rose from the pizza. "This isn't what I ordered. They've mixed up the orders."

 

She came over to see. "I'm not surprised. She was a strange little woman. Did you see her car? It's the world's last running Yugo, and she looked like the blonde ape from 'Planet of the Apes.'"

 

Mulder gaped at her, but Scully looked at the pizza forlornly. "I guess we should call them and tell them there's a mistake. Do we have to take the moral high road if Will's asleep and we hide the box afterward?"

 

He went to the living room window and checked the street, but the little car had gone. "Is it a medium pan pizza with extra cheese, onions, green peppers, banana peppers, black olives, and double mushrooms?" he asked.

 

"That's my guess. Ordered by people young enough to not have those peppers and onions come back to haunt them."

 

"It's ours."

 

"But you said it wasn't what you ordered."

 

"Not this time, but we have ordered it before," he assured her. "Maybe the Mystic Pizza Hut delivers via wormhole. Don't look a mystic gift pizza in the mouth, Scully. Let's eat."

 

****

 

Scully disdained his beer for the bottled green tea she brought but dug in to the pizza without lecturing him about processed foods or the antibiotics in dairy or whatever her cause at the moment. They sat on the deck, with Mulder trying to eat and drink without moving his left shoulder. The speakers played The Doobie Brothers, The Kinks, and The Animals, and the sky over Alexandria became speckled with stars. Ophiuchus rose from the east as Venus, the goddess of love, settled back into the horizon.

 

The briefing folder lay on the table with the vaccine formula inside it and his new Blackberry on top. The phone buzzed. The Gunmen, Skinner, Skinner again, The Gunmen again, Diane and Skinner. It threatened to vibrate off the table. Mulder fenced it in safely with beer bottles and let it buzz.

 

"Will you make the appointments?" Mulder asked between bites, in a tone not quite as idle as he intended. From her Adirondack chair, she turned her head to look at him. A wisp of auburn hair escaped the clip. The evening breeze found the strands and toyed with them affectionately. "The appointments with the fertility clinic. Last time, they wanted to do a physical, blood work. If you'll tell me when and where, I'll show up. I'll write them a check, but this time let's investigate the back room before we give up any cash or genetic material."

 

"Okay," she said by way of still not answering.

 

He took another bite of pizza and chewed thoughtfully. "Jeremiah Smith didn't erase my scars - on my leg, on my shoulder. I'm still circumcised and missing my tonsils," Mulder said. He paused to empty his beer bottle. "Just the spinal injury, and the cuts and scrapes. What he perceived as damage. Your tattoo isn't damage, but a lump in your breast is. Missing ova is damage. You might have all your scars and tattoos yet be in possession of a fully functioning reproductive system."

 

"Mulder, I don't know where to begin untangling the scientific inaccuracies of what you said." She watched him a few seconds. "Your psychic vampire healer didn't heal your shoulder. You're favoring it again."

 

"You're not drinking. It's lousy beer, but my cold beer has to be better than your tepid green tea."

 

"Green tea has antioxidants," she said. "Did you injure your shoulder on the plane? Or this morning? What exactly happened this morning, Mulder? Monica said you and DD Skinner shot another shape-shifting bounty hunter in the forest. Right after you promised me you wouldn't put yourself in danger."

 

"Might have been the same bounty hunter," Mulder said as he finished his slice. "If I didn't kill him the first time. Hard to tell. Scully, are you not drinking alcohol in case you're pregnant?" he pursued. "Do you think there’s a possibility?"

 

"Do you think you've had enough to drink?" she answered coolly.

 

He held up three fingers before pointing to the three empty beer bottles on the table between them. "William's asleep, and I'm in the process of saving the world. The whole damn world, Scully. Everyone lives, including the dead. You found a message from outer space, you don't have cancer, and we're having another baby, maybe. It's Miller time."

 

She watched him suspiciously, sat up, and turned toward him. "Your shoulder is bandaged," she said. "Mulder, what happened?"

 

Mulder looked down. A button was undone, and the edge of the white bandage showed at the neck of his shirt. "Oh. It's okay."

 

"What happened? Oh my God. Is that a gunshot wound? Monica said Deputy Director Skinner said you were fine. Shaken up with some minor burns. Did the paramedics see this?"

 

She pushed aside his collar to see, and he put his hand over the bandage to stop her. "No, it's- Scully, it's fine." Embarrassed, he confessed, "It's a tattoo. They hurt like hell, by the way. I can't imagine why anyone would pay to get a second one."

 

On the stereo, Stevie Nicks sang about love and change and the landslide of uncertainty with both, while Scully stared at him so long it became discomforting. Mulder thought of what she said a few days ago - about him making her feel naked. He'd envisioned this evening going differently, and he felt bare at the moment.

 

Nothing happened. Then, nothing happened some more.

 

"You got a tattoo?" she said. "Today?"

 

"I got a tattoo. Today. You got a tattoo," he reminded her. "Why can't I get a tattoo?"

 

"Did you make sure they used clean needles? Did you see their license? Tattoo artists are required by law to-"

 

He cut her off. "The room off the biker bar was kinda dark. I didn't see a license, but he gave me a discount."

 

She tilted her head, gave him a 'you're so full of shit' look, and gestured for him to show her his shoulder. Since arguing was pointless, he sat up straight, and peeled off his shirt and the gauze pad. He showed her the ornate compass rose, the size of a coaster, which covered the old scar. The tattoo was beautiful, but it didn't burn any less with the gauze off with the gauze on.

 

Scully scrutinized his shoulder in the fading light.

 

"Crop circle," he told her glibly. "You like it?"

 

"Your crop circle has 'north' marked on it," she pointed out.

 

"So I can find my way." In a less sarcastic tone, he added, "So I remember the star I steer by, when it gets dark."

 

Mulder jerked his polo shirt back on.

 

She continued studying him with her inscrutable look.

 

Mulder got up. He gathered his empty beer bottles and her empty tea bottle and dropped them in the trash on his way into the house.

 

"How can you not even recycle?" she called, and he felt relieved she'd found something else to harp on him about.

 

He opened the refrigerator and chose crappy beer number four, and he put a NICAP mug of water in the microwave to heat.

 

From the deck, she lectured him about how long it took plastic to break down in a landfill and how the average person produced four pounds of trash each day, but Mulder barely listened. It was surface chatter - facts she could quote while her scientific mind processed finding a message from space and seeing bodies she autopsied alive on CNN this afternoon. And them. And the last seven days. If the world didn't end, he and Scully might have to figure out the two of them.

 

She'd left her cell phone on the kitchen counter. It flashed excitedly with missed calls and messages. Mulder checked it and found the same people trying to reach him had started calling her. She'd turned the volume on her phone off, meaning she didn't want interruptions this evening, either.

 

He exhaled, emptying the air from his lungs, and took a slow breath. Faith, Mulder reminded himself. Any leap of faith included a moment of falling. Otherwise, it wasn't faith - or worth the leap. 'Scar' was to 'tattoo' as 'love' was to 'choice.' He hoped.

 

The box of herbal tea in the cabinet was three years old, but the bag still blushed as it hit the hot water. He looked for local, organic honey, and found some, though he had to chisel rather than spoon it out.

 

"I'm saving the planet on a somewhat larger scale," Mulder said, coming back to the doorway with his beer and her tea.

 

She leaned against the railing of the deck, watching the treetops and the big yellow moon. He leaned against the doorjamb, admiring her. The curve of her hips, the line of her neck, the color of her skin and her hair in the moonlight. She looked like a 1940's movie star - the reason the world needed Technicolor rather than black and white.

 

"I got it, Scully," he said like he told a secret. He felt giddy saying it aloud. "The formula for the Black Oil vaccine. Smith wrote it down, and I have it."

 

She turned her head, looking over her shoulder at him.

 

His Blackberry buzzed like an angry bee, and he let it. Agent Doggett called from the X-files office, Agent Reyes called from her cell, and John Byers called from Oregon. Mulder saw a number from the CDC office, too - some scientist foolish enough answer a call from the Deputy Director of the FBI on a weekend.

 

"I have the formula, and you found an intelligent message from space. We did it. The public can understand 'math message from space' - we saw the Jodie Foster movie," he said as he walked to her. "We don't need to do anything in secret. No conspiracy. This isn't a blurry photograph. We can go on national TV with the hard evidence and say 'we are not alone, but we have a vaccine.'"

 

He didn't know how he expected her to respond, but she said, "It was a Carl Sagan book." She took the mug and resumed watching the horizon. "The book was made into a movie."

 

Right. A vital stipulation at the moment.

           

The steam drifted from her cup. The breeze rustled her hair. Over the speakers, the first iconic piano notes played, and Joe Cocker's voice began to sing "When the Night Comes," sounding warm and promising.

 

"What if you're wrong?" she asked without looking at him. "About the vaccine, about the future? Six prime numbers isn't a reliable pattern. Your suspect," she said, starting to speak quicker. "Whatever I thought I saw, clearly I was under duress. Maybe he or she used tetrodotoxin - a neurotoxin derived from the puffer fish believed to be the primary ingredient in 'zombie powder' to induce a deep coma-"

 

"I'm not wrong." Mulder leaned against the railing beside her and helped her watch the darkness. He reminded her, "If the victims weren't dead before the autopsies, they were after. And they're all alive, like I'm alive. The numbers are a pattern, the shape-shifter was real, and it is a viable vaccine. Don't deny what you saw, Scully, or what you know - in your head or in your heart."

 

She stood perfectly still, but the waves of anxiety around her were choppy. He knew if he touched her, she'd startle like a skittish animal.

 

"I want you with me on this one," he said softly, "Developing the vaccine, running the project. Whatever’s involved, I want you at the helm. You're a scientist and medical doctor with expertise in extra-terrestrial viruses, but you're also Scully. Invariant and compassionate. Uncompromising. When the rubber meets the road - or humanity meets its future - you keep me honest. You're the star I steer by. Every truth I have, in some way, I have it because of you. Don't think I don't know."

 

She nodded - neither committing nor refusing.

 

After a silent moment, he swallowed and said, "We're real too. You and me. I love you, and I choose you. As is. No take-backs. All roads lead back to you, even the long ones."

 

Still, no response except her profile studying the sky. She set her mug on the railing and took his hand. Rather than holding it, she turned it over, examining his palm where the stitches had been. She kept looking at it as if trying to predict the future.

 

"Faith," he reminded her. "Some things you have to take on faith."

 

Sometimes, Mulder wondered how little Dana Scully had done so well in school when her favorite answer was 'D - none of the above.' Her response to his proposition - both romantic and anti-apocalyptic - was, "I brought my overnight bag. My laptop, my briefcase. After I talked with you and to Monica, I was worried about you," she said, sounding shy about it. "I planned on staying here tonight."

 

"I saw your bag in the car." He swallowed and asked, "Then what?"

 

"Well, first thing in the morning, I want to see this formula. I'm not talking to any TV cameras until I run some tests."

 

"Scully, I want you to do more than spend the night," he said. He put his hand on the small of her back, over the serpent perpetually chasing itself. "Stay," he requested before he lost his nerve. She never did anything casually, and he never did anything half-way. "As in 'stay forever.' Stay with me and develop the vaccine and have another baby and save the world together. Let's go for the brass ring. Or fair-mined, recycled platinum rings, if it makes you happy. I can't be something I'm not. It won't be quiet and it won't be safe and it won't be calm, but I'll tell you what your life will be with me: the trip of a lifetime."

 

She didn't respond. And she didn't respond some more, but her head started tilting. With a protractor, her disbelief was calculable by the angle of her head and the altitude of her eyebrows. Mulder estimated the romantic threat level as elevated and tipping toward humiliating.

 

He started trying to think of some reason to go upstairs and check on William. Or claim temporary insanity. A head injury. The tattoo made him do it.

 

"Fox Mulder," she said, "am I mistaken, or did you propose to me - in the most roundabout manner possible - by getting a tattoo, saving humanity, and quoting 'Doctor Who?'"

 

"I might have, yeah," he admitted quickly. "I'm saving humanity primarily because of you and William. The rest of humanity, I'm not so fond of. Well, Frohike, I guess; I kinda like Melvin Frohike and Skinner and whoever makes Dodger Dogs."

 

He swore minutes turned into hours before she smiled, nodded, and mouthed "Okay."

 

He remembered breathing was necessary for survival, so he started doing it again. "Good, because I carried your bag upstairs and put your blow dryer back where it belongs," he confessed. "Also, the bow-chicka-bow-wow may have to wait until I get some sleep. Also, for the record, I'm not carpooling to work in your little hippie-mobile."

 

She opened her mouth but closed it again. Her smile spread to her eyes so they sparkled like sapphires. The last notes of "When the Night Comes" faded, and the next song was The Rolling Stones again, this time "Beast of Burden."

 

"Aren't you going to play that Joe Cocker song five times, claim it's your birthday, and insist I dance with you?" she asked.

 

Mulder blinked. "I don't know how to go back. Rewind. Whatever. We have to take whatever comes next."

 

"Okay," she repeated, this time audible.

 

"Okay," he agreed, still feeling stupidly giddy.

 

"Are you ever going to answer your phone?" The new Blackberry vibrated its way to the edge of the table and teetered at the precipice of voiding the warranty. "What do they want?"

 

"They want to know where I got the formula for the vaccine I faxed them. Sooner or later, they'll either decide to wait until tomorrow, or they'll show up here. My money is on Langly and Frohike pulling into my driveway in their VW bus in the next thirty minutes." Skinner lived closer, but he had spaghetti and seniority; the Gunmen were more excitable and had less to do on Sunday nights since the season finale of "The Dresden Files." "This is likely the most peace and quiet we'll get for a decade."

 

"You want another baby?" she asked skeptically. "Do you understand Will's not going to get any less inquisitive or more malleable, and the serial killers of the world won't take a vacation while we're working on this vaccine of yours?"

 

He nodded. "Yeah."

 

"Mulder, you're crazy."

 

"I know," he admitted. "But I'm good in bed when I'm not dead or dead on my feet. And you smell so nice."

 

She decided practically, "You should dance with me now, Mulder."

 

So he did. He put his arms around her gratefully, rested his chin on the top of her head, and turned them so he watched the horizon. The stars rose from the east and watched back, each a little asterisk to some mysterious cosmic footnote.

 

Five light-years away, still undetectable by humans' radio telescopes, the colonists' ships approached. The new phone vibrated off the table and hit the deck with a crash costing the taxpayers $335 and went silent. William slept, and the Rolling Stones played, and he and Scully had all the time in the world.

 

****

 

End: 7 Days in May

 

Author's note: with thanks to mimic117 for beta reading. Twice.


End file.
